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intermittent heat

rgnmstrrgnmstr Member Posts: 226
Winter is coming. My 2002 LSV8 Sport has developed an intermittent heating problem. Going down the road heat comes out the vents. When at idle or when coasting with my foot off the gas the air coming out the vents turns cool. Anyone experience this?

Comments

  • rlong2rlong2 Member Posts: 4
    My 2002 LS is in the shop right now for the same problem. They said that there is an auxillary water pump that keeps the coolant flowing to the heater core and keeps the engine cool when at idle. It's a dealer product only. Here in KC it's $170.00. Check to see if your heater core hoses are hot. Mine were hot going into the heater core but not on the return side. Good Luck.
  • rgnmstrrgnmstr Member Posts: 226
    $170 for a little pump! How much is the labor? I couldn't begin to guess where the heater hoses are. Todays cars have 8 million wires, vacum hoses etc and it's all buried under plastic shrouds. I don't recognize anything anymore when I pop the hood these days.
  • rlong2rlong2 Member Posts: 4
    The labor was $75.00. I'm not sure where it's located, but it did the trick. It's hotter than fish grease now.
  • rgnmstrrgnmstr Member Posts: 226
    Well, I fooled around with mine over the weekend. I tried "bleeding" the cooling system to see if there was any air in the system. After doing this I filled the coolant reservoir to the top. It seemed to take more fluid than I let out. Maybe it was a little low to start with. Anyhow, now my engine light is on all the time. Could draining fluid while bleeding the system triggered something that caused the engine light to come on? BTW the heat at idle has improved.
  • rlong2rlong2 Member Posts: 4
    Yeah, It has a sensor for low coolant. Just disconnect the negative battery cable for @ 30 seconds and it will reset the fault.
  • rgnmstrrgnmstr Member Posts: 226
    Didn't know about that. I'll try it tomorrow. I did read in the manual that a engine light corrected fault should go away after 3 cold starts.
  • rgnmstrrgnmstr Member Posts: 226
    I disconected the neg. battery cable and that took care of the engine light problem. Thanks. I think filling the coolent overflow tank the other day has maybe solved my low heat at idle. Now if I could figure out why my drivers door electric lock only works half the time and if I could get a couple of coil packs replaced at a fair price I'd have a perfect car once again.
  • seanls39seanls39 Member Posts: 1
    Intermittent heat, door locks, fuel door, and rough idle, could they be related? I took my car for a few 3hr + highway drives. I experienced the locked up fuel door to fuel up before heading home. I experience the intermittent heat on the way home. The next day I experienced the locked up driver door lock. And until I noticed the idle had just gotten rough, it was running great with great fuel mileage.

    I had experienced the locked up fuel door once before after a long trip and the Ford dealer said they had to unhook the battery cables because there was no other way to reprogram it, like in GM vehicles.

    It seems that some how an extra electrical charge gets built up in the system and intermittently locks different things up, or maybe takes them out as in the ignition coils.

    Has anyone been able to trace the root of this problem and come up with a permanent fix?
  • jen0jen0 Member Posts: 10
    I have an 02 L2 V8. It has 210,00 miles. My heat has progessively gotten worse over the past year. Actually it all started three years ago when I had my radiator power flushed. That clogged up my thermostat so I had to buy a new one and ever since then my heat has gotten worse. When I started my car in the a.m. it would blow hot air but when I started driving it got hot. Two months ago I had some other work done on the car. They had to remove the radiator overflow to get to the part they were fixing. When I got my car back I had NO heat at all. Not even when I step on the gas. This sucks! I live in New England and it's December. All the mechanics I have called said they would power flush my systme again first to see if that will fix the heat. IDK if that will do anything but clog up my thermostat again. At this point I'm ready to try anything to get my heat back.
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