heater behaving irrational
 

My heater behaves badly.
When I ride to work in the morning the heater works perfectly well. As long as I can ride my normal speed on the highway all is fine, but as soon as I hit the daily traffic jam(s) and I have to slow down or stop, sometimes the heating starts blowing cold air :confused:
Then I hit the power button to stop cold air from coming in.
When the traffic jam disappears and I can get on speed again the heater starts working again.
Trying all buttons, power, front back, blower, AC, nothing changes it.
And then again, sometimes I have no problem at all...

very peculiar.
I think my car is getting too old

wow ..seen this before on several of my older vehicles... usually vacuum related..control head /blend door or just a leak somewhere in a line... but there are much better minds on this forum then mine as i am not sure to what extent vacuum is still used in temp control on vehicles in the last 15 years or so.... think electronics has taken over...curious to hear from others

Well actually I found the cause... :o
I found that the coolant level was much too low and after refilling the heater worked again.
After that I found a small puddle of coolant under the car so now I have to find the leak. :(
I also wanna find out why I don't get a warning light on my dashboard when the coolant level gets so low? :confused:

Position of where the coolant lies below the car may find and answer.

Somewhere front/right.. Monday the car goes on the carlift

Hi Vmaxxer,
Sounds like you've got a leak there. On why doesn't the warning light come on, unfortunately car temperature warning lights were made by somebody who didn't have a clue back in the day and nobody has really changed the design since. It will warn you on over-temperature, but usually that's by sensing the temperature of the water flowing. The problem there? When there is no water at all to sense, the system fails (the gauge drops to zero/low). Stupid design and it's always annoyed me that they don't put a simple pressure flow switch or fluid float in the expansion bottle. Anyway!

Hope you can find where the leak is coming from. Front right, from driver seat or from standing facing the rear of vehicle (at bonnet). Some guesses, if front right from driver seat, lower corner of radiator corroded and leaking (That's what I had, very slight over time. It only leaked at cold, as it warmed up it stopped leaking. Very tricky to find. I changed the radiator out, for info on that look on the usual youtube spot ;-)
If other side then could be from the aux webasto heater, those pipes corrode and leak, the fix is a lot harder since the pipes aren't easy to source.

Good luck and remember to report back!

On the warning lights:
My 30 year old Mercedes has a floating sensor in the coolant tank so you immediately know when the level gets too low.. funny the Chrysler doesn't do that :/

Today my mechanic found a ripped rubber tube just below the waterpump. Its a small U-shaped tube which he hopes to get in tomorrow so its not a major problem after all. :)

Good news then, a simple fix then.

And the float sensor/warning lights, that's the first one I've ever heard of having that, makes so much sense to me but I've never encountered that or any other better solution!