Are hundy heaters weak sauce?! (1 Viewer)

[Unearth]

I've been away from the LC for a few days, but I'll check this as soon as I'm able. Good tip. Best I've been able to do lately is get a reference temp off the 4runner. On max heat I'm getting 142 deg air out of the upper vents at an ambient temp of upper 30s. I'll be curious to see if I'm getting similar or not in the LC. I definitely would sweat to death if I left the heat on 80+ in the 4runner, and it sounds like that's common for LC too.

Ever find out what the issue was? Sounds like it might have just been a neglected front heater core.

 

[TheRealPoser]

Ever find out what the issue was? Sounds like it might have just been a neglected front heater core.

Sorry to be MIA on the one, been a bit crazy lately and I've had the LC in the garage fixing a window leak. I did finally do some more investigating. Turns out I was the weak sauce all along. I checked the output temps in the front vents. There was some variation between them, but on high they were sitting in the 148-158 range.

I think there were a few things going on. One was that little carpet flap covering the lower vents. I may have underestimated how much impact cutting out the floor vents had. Another was I wasn't running the rear heater, so the front was having to do all the work. I'm used to running the rear heat from the front in my sienna without thinking about it, and I didn't realize until this thread there was a rear core. The third was I forgot the fact that I had the rear carpet out because of the leak, and the two layers of carpet and carpet pad provide some degree of insulation from the cold coming through the floor. I expect the rear was cooling faster than normal.

That said, in looking into it, I think it would make sense to flush the cores given the age of the vehicle just as a maintenance item. I have a long list of other work and the coolant and t's were replaced fairly recently, so I don't know how soon I'll do it. Summer is coming so that will buy me a little time at least!

 

[Unearth]

That said, in looking into it, I think it would make sense to flush the cores given the age of the vehicle just as a maintenance item. I have a long list of other work and the coolant and t's were replaced fairly recently, so I don't know how soon I'll do it. Summer is coming so that will buy me a little time at least!

I always had the tiniest whisper of heat coming from the front of mine(2000 LX w/ 247k).

I popped off the connections after the T's at the firewall, fed some compressed air opposite of water flow, flushed the core out with water with this, fed compressed air again. Repeated in both directions twice. Then poured off the shelf CLR into the core and let it sit for about 3 hours. Repeated the process from before and bingo, had full heat again.

People seemed to be very worried about mineral contamination with the tap water or damage from the CLR, but the solution to pollution is dilution in this case. Just make sure to have some Toyota coolant on hand and keep an eye on the levels and the expansion tank.

Has anyone on here run powdered dishwashing detergent or something similar? I've used Irontite on a Cherokee with decent results.