Heater stopped working - help!
Discussion
ant111s said:
Out in lotus today and was cold so put heater on 30 secs later it just stopped for no known reason. Anyone else had this problem? Shud I check fuses? If so anyone know where they are. Cheers in advance.
Did it get warm again shortly afterwards?My car seems to do this every so often... with the heater on full hot and blowers on full, every so often the warm air blast will cool down, until it's blowing cool air - then the warmth will return.
With the ambient air below zero, perhaps there are some circumstances where the engine doesn't need to use the radiator and the thermostat closes up a bit - meaning lower flow in the heater element at the front of the car, and less heat into the cabin? I've only had this effect when driving really gently in really cold air - if the engine coolant isn't getting really hot as it is, and the ambient air has cooled the temp down sufficiently, then perhaps the coolant circuit would close off the heater / rad to prevent over-cooling?
Not really sure, this is just guesswork, but I'd have thought that you'll only get hot air from the heater if the engine coolant is actively flowing through the heater matrix... and if that flow slows down for any reason (thermostat not open, cold engine, etc.) then you'll get reduced heating.
Even with the intermittent reduction from 'hot' to 'cool' air (not ambient - this was freezing outside, so I'd notice it if the air on full-blower was just the cold outside air) and back to hot again, I haven't noticed any fluctuation or abnormal engine coolant temps from the dashboard, so this may be totally unrelated...
Gooby said:
Resistor pack....
My bet is resitor pack too.Mine has only recently packed in also. Check out this thread:
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
Thanks
tom
When you say 'stopped working' do you mean that the blower stopped or you just stopped getting hot air and got cold instead? If it's the blower then I'd be voting for the resistor pack failing as well, my went West a few months back and is a very commmon failure - there are a number of threads for this both here and on Seloc.
CardShark said:
When you say 'stopped working' do you mean that the blower stopped or you just stopped getting hot air and got cold instead? If it's the blower then I'd be voting for the resistor pack failing as well, my went West a few months back and is a very commmon failure - there are a number of threads for this both here and on Seloc.
Yea blower stopped, completely dead! Must be the resistor pack then, how much you recon we are looking at?I think the most commonly quoted figure is £600 to get it fixed, though I think some specialists do it slightly cheaper. It is so expensive because the front clam has to come off - most of the cost is the labour to take off the clam and put it back again.
You can DIY fix it and I think in some cases it is possible to do it without taking the front clam off - you can do it through the service panels or I heard someone did it through the dash board. I understand that it is much more difficult if you have a/c.
Make sure you get the new sytle resistor pack fitted when you have it done, which sits in a place where it doesn't corrode in water (which is what causes the failure in the first place). I'm also having some holes drilled to let the water flow out (I understand this was the previous "fix" before the new style resistor pack came out).
Also, consider getting other stuff done whilst the clam is off (on the basis that it will save money in the long run) - I'm having the heater actuator changed (apparently this can also go which would cause a similar failure), stainless steel braided brake hoses (this is a common modification to stock rubber hoses on the elise), new aluminium radiator (the plastic end caps on the stock radiator can crack or corrode), stainless steel toe eye mount and toe eye kit (the stock one is generally very rusted by the time you need to use it) and HID dipped beam headlights (standard elise headlights are crap).
Hope this helps.
tom
You can DIY fix it and I think in some cases it is possible to do it without taking the front clam off - you can do it through the service panels or I heard someone did it through the dash board. I understand that it is much more difficult if you have a/c.
Make sure you get the new sytle resistor pack fitted when you have it done, which sits in a place where it doesn't corrode in water (which is what causes the failure in the first place). I'm also having some holes drilled to let the water flow out (I understand this was the previous "fix" before the new style resistor pack came out).
Also, consider getting other stuff done whilst the clam is off (on the basis that it will save money in the long run) - I'm having the heater actuator changed (apparently this can also go which would cause a similar failure), stainless steel braided brake hoses (this is a common modification to stock rubber hoses on the elise), new aluminium radiator (the plastic end caps on the stock radiator can crack or corrode), stainless steel toe eye mount and toe eye kit (the stock one is generally very rusted by the time you need to use it) and HID dipped beam headlights (standard elise headlights are crap).
Hope this helps.
tom
If you've got AC then realistically it's going to be a dealer/specialist job, if no AC then it is possible to DIY but it can be a real pain. I tried doing mine myself, first by just going through the service panels at the front and then eventually having to take the clam off, very long story short I had quite a few issues and ended up trailering the car to a better spannerman than me to finish the job off as no matter what I did I couldn't seem to bleed the air out of the water system after getting it all back together again, also had a couple of clam mounting issues. Plenty of people have done it themselves as the part that's failed costs peanuts compared to the labour cost involved, if you're confident after reading up advice on the resistor threads and you have the time/patience/ability then go for it, failing that my advice (negative as it may sound) is to get it to someone who's done it before - just make sure that they replace the failed part with the modified version!
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