Technical Heating, No Hot till I go!

[SP8600]

Just had my head gasket done, but now I've noticed no matter how long I leave the car run the heating just does not get hot untill I start moving. After that its fine even when I come to a stop.

Any idea's?

Its an mk1 1.2 8v.

 

[hmallett]

It's normal. It takes a very long time for the engine to get warm if you start from cold and leave it idling.
If you think there's definitely something wrong, perhaps your thermostat is stuck open?
H

 

[SP8600]

hmm... Well I left it for about 10-15 mins tonight and it didn't blow hot inside eventhough the rad fan came on. As soon as I went for a short drive it started blowing hot.

Oh and I was only moving at about 30mph.

 

[faster4_tec]

if you leave it running at idle on the driveway it will take about 8-10minutes till warm air comes thru, its only when the engine is having to slave away that it generates loads of extra heat and gets your heater hot. I find that in the 6-7minutes it takes to get from halls to uni my heater will get right to hot, not as hot as it can get but still warm enough, by this time the temp gauge is halfway between 1/4 and 1/2 'hot'.

 

[SP8600]

Just a thought, could this be an airlock in the system?

 

[pubcrawler]

Sounds like one to me.

There's a good definitive post somewhere in this section about how to bleed these properly.

 

[SP8600]

Blead it earlier today and its all sorted. There was loads of air in the system, took me ages to get it all out.