Are all Micras this cold?

[maddave]

Hi, for annoying reasons (big lump of metal in road, car hitting metal, sump disappearing, oil gushing, car now in menders!), I have had to borrow my girlfriends Micra to get to work.
Its a 1999 1.0l

Its a great car but what annoyed me was how cold it was!! The heating was blowing on full with the dial all the way round to the red. The engine had got up to temperature (temp indicator in the middle of the dial), yet it seemed to blow only slightly warmish air out all vents. I know the two middle vents are for cold air permanently (stupid design that is!), but surely you should get hot air out the side, windscreen and foot well vents. It was literally cold than my breath!!

I was traveling on the motorway for 15 minutes and thought that should get the coolant temp up, but nothing!!

Is this normal? If not, can anything be done?

cheers.

 

[Retepetsir]

Doesnt sound normal to me, mine can get very hot!

 

[sonic]

sounds like an air lock in the heater matrix, either that or the system is low on coolant, the heater is the first thing to act up if that's the case.

 

[Katie]

Mine gets so hot, it burned my clutch foot on friday night when i had the blowers pointing down....

 

[sph-87]

My heater is similar to that, its get hot but only on certain settings, but when i use the middle vents it blows cold air, and theside vents and foot vents are only warm...

 

[maddave]

There are no problems with the coolant since I cleaned and flushed the system in august when I gave it a full service. Coolant level hasn't dropped since and is still lovely and fresh looking.

Any other ideas?

Cheers.

 

[pjg1979]

My Micra 1.4 K11 takes upto 4 minutes in the morning to get hot (Needle Half way), then I just open the window cos I like to have toastie feet on the way to work, lol.

 

[Robb]

My old '99 1.0 ally wouldnt get very hot, i noticed if you turn the temperatrue knob up quickly it clicks (which it shouldnt) and so the hottest setting isnt necessarily the hottest. Couldnt be arsed to fix anything about it lol.

Try turning the temp knob really fast from hot to cold (see if it clicks) then turn it up again real slowly.

 

[maddave]

My old '99 1.0 ally wouldnt get very hot, i noticed if you turn the temperatrue knob up quickly it clicks (which it shouldnt) and so the hottest setting isnt necessarily the hottest. Couldnt be arsed to fix anything about it lol.

Try turning the temp knob really fast from hot to cold (see if it clicks) then turn it up again real slowly.

Interesting. It does click, once when you try and push it past the last red dot on the dial.

Getting get the haynes out and have a fiddle!!

 

[Robb]

I realised it werent as hot this autumn for some reason and then noticed the clicking.

Think its just a bit worn lol

 

[maddave]

I realised it werent as hot this autumn for some reason and then noticed the clicking.

Think its just a bit worn lol

What is the clicking then? Is it where the dial is moving but the bit its meant to be moving is not moving?! Does that makes sense!!!?

 

[1.0ally]

Hi Maddave,
I saw this post and decided to join up to offer a possible solution. I had the same problem recently and it turned out to be a clogged filter located just after the blower. To access it you have to remove the glovebox lid and you will see a section of dash coloured plastic going across the back infront of the blower box. There are vertical perforations in the plastic which I cut (otherwise you would have to remove most of the dash) to access a narrow vertical cover which is held in with one small screw at the bottom. Take the cover off, pull the panel filter out and replace the cover and see if that works. It did for me so I left the filter out! Word of warning- make sure u cover ur eyes and dont breathe in for the 1st few seconds on full blast cos a lot of dust can blow out!
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Ian

 

[Swiper]

Hi Maddave,
I saw this post and decided to join up to offer a possible solution. I had the same problem recently and it turned out to be a clogged filter located just after the blower. To access it you have to remove the glovebox lid and you will see a section of dash coloured plastic going across the back infront of the blower box. There are vertical perforations in the plastic which I cut (otherwise you would have to remove most of the dash) to access a narrow vertical cover which is held in with one small screw at the bottom. Take the cover off, pull the panel filter out and replace the cover and see if that works. It did for me so I left the filter out! Word of warning- make sure u cover ur eyes and dont breathe in for the 1st few seconds on full blast cos a lot of dust can blow out!
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Ian

this will more than likely be the fault. i had the same happen to my micra
http://www.micra.org.uk/showthread.php?t=20265

just do as 1.0ally said and remove the pollen filter if it has one, not all micras have 'em.

 

[maddave]

Well I had a good poke around today and found, as suspected above the polen filter was filthy!!

Why though, did Nissan put it in a place that is impossible to get too!!?

I took all four of the gold cross head bolts but it wouldn't budge. So ended up cutting the filter with snips and yanking it out the hole over the course of about an hour and half!! It was chock full of black thick crap and was restricting every but of air from the blower.

Afterwards as I left the car idlling I noticed the air was coming out the vents now and after about 5 minutes warm arm was coming out too!

Amazing!

Cheers for the help.