Modern car heaters take longer to heat up?

[Nuieve]

Pretty much every single older car (lets say, pre 2000) I've driven the heater would start blowing warm air in less than 2 minutes in subfreezing temps. Usually I'd feel the air getting noticably warmer just driving around the block. In a few minutes, it's turn hot and I'd get comfortable quick.

I've had a 06 and 10 MB, and 10 Miata. The heaters in those were useless for short trips. I wouldn't get warm air in less than 10 minutes. My commute to work is 15 minutes. I'd be downright cold for the first 7-8 minutes, then get somewhat warmer... but only get finally hot and toasty when I was only about 2-3 minutes away from work. So most of the time I'd be freezing cold while driving because goddamn heaters take so long to warm up.

Right now I drive a beater 99' Subaru and this thing heats up almost instanteneously.

Anybody else noticed this or was this just case of particular cars I've had?

[todras]

BS. Never had a car or been in a car that's heated very quickly in the winter.

[hardcore4life]

my car heats up after 2 minutes

[JohnnieWalker85]

My 1.8t jetta seems to take a lifetime to heat up. My wife's 2001 civic is a little bit faster, but not great.

[Egz]

My Civic is up to warm within 5 minutes. I think thats ok.

[p_h]

I had a terrible pickup truck and the heater wouldn't blow hot for about 3.5 miles of driving.

Newer cars have electric heaters that blow hot air almost immediately.


OP, get your nerves checked.

[Jordan 191]

My car blows heat very fast and I thought I read that DI contributes to this.

[tampaSi]

They're just taking global warming into account.

[LouieTHEkid]

We have higher temperature thermostats now.

[classicjetta]

It's true, my current Jetta takes a long time to heat up whereas the MkII was pretty quick. The Escape is also very fast to warm up as well.

[Sir UNBANNED_GERBIL M.B.]

My Audi takes a while. My fiances Echo takes like 10 seconds LOL.


I thought modern cars with aluminum blocks would warm up zippity. But my Audi doesn't

[jastevenson]

Same exact problem!!

I drive my car like a maniac for the 1st 10 min, pedal to the metal between traffic lights, frantically trying to get the engine temp up so that I can get some damn heat.

2003 Infiniti.

And the seat heaters suck too.

And it's not even sub-freezing.

[Brickx3]

My 1.8t jetta seems to take a lifetime to heat up. My wife's 2001 civic is a little bit faster, but not great.

my 01 civic has warm air on a below freezing day in < 4 min of driving. That is fast imo.

[Live-Wire]

Even my TDI had some heat coming after 5 minutes or less (TDI's are notorious for weak heaters)... My BMW has heat within a minute, car is perfectly warm in about 5 or less. My dad's XC70 also gets hot quickly... both cars the heated seats make you pretty toasty in a few mins, feel good warmth in under 1 minute. I swear my BMW's seat heaters take the edge off of the cold seat in about 10 seconds or less.

Your cars are broken or you don't know how to set up the heater... can't turn the fan on full blast and expect heat. For the first minute you should only run the fan at low speed, then after a minute or two turn it up... need to let heat build up in the heater core before you really crank the fan. A bit of warmth will come out when the fan is low. Watch an auto-climate system work, this is how it control the heaters too.

[absoluteczech]

id say my mk6 gti was fairly average to good, my mini does take a while to blow hot air. however my girlfriends S (n18) blows hot air a lot quicker than mine, but her cars in the garage

[bob570]

My MK3 2.0 would be blowing warm air in about 1 minute in subfreezing temps before my thermostat got stuck open.

[Short Bus]

I don't notice so much because the heated seats work pretty quick.

[drecian]

I noticed this the other morning too. My 77 Corolla would start blowing warm air after around 30secs, and I would have to turn the heater tap back down from full after 2 minutes or so.

Something to do with using copper heater cores being more efficient perhaps?

[feels_road]

My heated seats and the auxiliary electric heater do a good job keeping me warm for 2-4 minutes before the engine gets warm. Can't tell you how it would cope at really low temperatures below freezing, though.

[Klim18]

09 GTI definitely takes more than 5 mins to warm up... and on a very cold days, the temperature would even go down while standing at red lights. I guess that's mainly because of the iron engine block in a comparison to aluminum.

[Aguilar]

Newer cars have electric heaters that blow hot air almost immediately.

True story. I told my wife to use the remove starter on the Sonic when parked outside and give it a couple of minutes for the engine to warm up. She told me there was no need, even when cold the car would blow heat.

[volkstyle]

My but is warm within 20 seconds, thats fine with me

[vwpiloto]

My S2000's heater blows hot air in a under 2 minutes, easily. In fact, it's one of the hottest I've experienced, likely due to the small cabin.

[McBanagon]

My heater core is about 8' away from the engine. That's a lot of coolant to get warmed up and moving. I'm at at least 5 minutes before I can feel anything.

[Surf Green]

My GTI is blowing heat about a mile from home. The TDI is cold for about 6. I blame the difference in efficiency.

The TDI also can't maintain operating temperature if it's left idling.

[jzobie]

My wife's '05 Accord is blowing heat by the time it gets to the bottom of our hill. My TT takes 10 minutes before the coolant is warm enough to start blowing anything which sucks because my commute is 8 minutes.

[Cooper]

Newer cars have electric heaters that blow hot air almost immediately.

People at tdiclub.com post that their friends are amazed the heat comes on so quickly.

[GruuvenNorth]

What's the tempurature you guys are complaining about? we had about 2 weeks of -15 - -25 *C. Heat in 5 minutes in a TDI? Yeah right lol. It would start blowing warm air in about 5 mins. Not to mention the temp guage doesnt even get close to 1/4.

I have the plug in heater so when it's cold, the coolan circulates warm but on days i get too lazy to plug it in, I pay for it on the drive to work for 10 mins.

[justanotherusername]

Part of the difference here is that modern aluminum blocks naturally dissipate heat better than the old iron blocks did. Modern cooling systems are also generally designed to deal with more power (and ultimately more heat) so that excess capacity is probably increasing warm up time as well.

The 135i starts blowing slightly warm pretty quickly, but it takes a long time to really heat up.

[TangoRed]

In under freezing temps the auto climate will blow lukewarm air in about 5 minutes and hot air in about 10. The heated seats have taken the cold away by the time I pull onto the my main road.

[JCT]

mine takes about 11 minutes to make me turn my heat down and when idling the temp goes down to around 175 and under in the winter months

[Fe2O3]

Suck it up folks. All that extra chest hair and body hair from that manly manual transmission driving should easily keep the little tootsies warm that few extra minutes of waiting.

[vasillalov]

In my 335i, I don't even attempt to get any heat out of the engine till the coolant temp reaches 180F. This is happens relatively quickly since the electric coolant pump is shut off during warm up.

Full heat is not available till the OIL gets to 180F and that takes about 10 miles of driving.

EDIT: I love my heated seats and so does whichever girl that gets to ride in the front seat.

[kingowe]

I think the aluminum/iron block makes quite the difference. My mom's CR-V blows warm air within a couple of minutes, and reaches normal operating temperature within about 7 or 8. My MKV TDI takes a little more than 10 for the temp needle to start to move and blow non-cold air. And it takes a lot longer to warm up to operating temp.

Granted the efficiency thing is also pretty important, because as soon as the temp hits about -15*C (~5*F), my TDI won't actually reach operating temperature unless I'm beating on it a bit. And when I crank the heat up to full, it sucks the heat away from the engine and drops the coolant temp.

Her CR-V gets ~600km to a tank and my TDI gets about 1000, so a fair tradeoff I'd say!

Long live der diesel!!

[Slayer]

I've noticed this too.. My 2008.5 GTI takes a bit to get heat.. but what's weird is my Mom's 2009 A4 with the same TSI motor takes no time at all

but yes, in general, newer cars seem to take longer than 80's/90's stuff from what I've seen.