i am driving a fridge, help!

[treehouse]

Hello, just at the right time of year i am not getting any hot air into the car via the heating system. the car is a 2001 Alhambra tdi se. the fans are working on the climate control when selected for the front and rear.
the engine temp is normally sat at a constant 90c but i have noticed in the last couple of days it has dropped to 70c some of the time, could this be connected, i know its very cold at present but i cant remember it doing this last year.
could it be that the system needs bleeding on the heater matrix side? are there any bleed screw i can access ?
are there known faults with the climate control unit that give these symptoms?

cheers

stu

 

[Muttley]

If your engine temperature is dropping then it might be that your thermostat has stuck open.

TDI's take some time to warm up, being more efficient than petrol engines and so generating less waste heat. If you're only driving short distances at low speeds then you might not be getting up to temperature. However I've never had the engine go below 90° once it's come up to temperature, even just driving around in town at 30 mph or less.

 

[treehouse]

cheers for advice

Thanks for your advice, the car does its recent temp drop from 90c to about 70c when on a long run , say 15 miles which it has never done before. i will investigate the thermostat sticking open. but even when the temp is sat at 90c i am getting very little hot air or cold air in fact blowing into so i dont know if the actual climate control unit has gone wonky, or some air flap in a duct is not opening to let hot air be drawn in etc. going back many years when things like this use to happen on my cars it could point to an air lock deciding to wedge itself into the heater matrix but i dont know if i can check this , even to get a hand on the matrix to see if its hot would be a starting point.

cheers for your help

Stu

 

[A-spot]

Aux water pump probably not running, hence no circulation into the cabin heater matrix, if its not running then the error will also stop the Aux water heater from kicking in during cold weather conditions, hence your 15 mile warm ups.
Trying to sort mine at the moment, I've got pump running with new brushes in motor, so once engine is warm the heating is working, but for some reason ECU is still seeing fault(despite clearing fault codes), and therefor no Aux heater helping it warm up.
Hope this helps guide you in right direction, though not a complete fix yet!