Weak heater?

6369 Views 9 Replies 4 Participants Last post by arild, Feb 3, 2015

arild

Discussion Starter · Jan 23, 2015

I finally test drove the 140 HP diesel with a manual gearbox. Overall the car was very nice. The grip was incredible. The lower parts of the dashboard was the least impressive part of the car: Hard and cheap-looking plastic that seemed to easily scratch.

Anyway, over to my question: Has anyone with a diesel Renegade driven the car in very cold weather? Like -15 degrees Celcius and colder? If so, how did the heater perform?

The reason I am asking is because the dealer told me that the only bad thing he could say about the car was that the heater in the diesel warmed up the passenger compartment extremely slow when the outside temperature was low. And since we typically get -15 and colder two or three weeks every winter, this is a concern of mine.

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mich

· #2 · Jan 26, 2015

Actually it is not true.

On the other hand, it's true that the logic of the dual climate control, in Auto mode, has some weird behaviour....
set the °C at 25°, it pumps a lot to reach 25°C then, once over for tiny values, suddenly it switches to fresh air without reducing the fan speed, so you get a lot of fresh/cold air on the face.

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Grusel_KarRen

· #3 · Jan 27, 2015

mich said:
Actually it is not true.

On the other hand, it's true that the logic of the dual climate control, in Auto mode, has some weird behaviour....
set the °C at 25°, it pumps a lot to reach 25°C then, once over for tiny values, suddenly it switches to fresh air without reducing the fan speed, so you get a lot of fresh/cold air on the face.

Hi, happens this every time you change the temperature?

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Jeepers

· #4 · Jan 27, 2015

Are you able to turn off the fresh air coming in and recycle it instead? Would this solve the problem?

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mich

· #5 · Jan 27, 2015

Grusel_KarRen said:
Hi, happens this every time you change the temperature?

You can feel it a lot when you start the car in the morning. So I think it isn't related on the internal and external temperatures only. It seems that the coolant temperature is involved in the algorithm.

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mich

· #6 · Jan 27, 2015

Jeepers said:
Are you able to turn off the fresh air coming in and recycle it instead? Would this solve the problem?

I have to test deep, of course, I think it's not a solution, just a workaround. I never recycle the air if not strictly necessary, tunnels, downtowns, etc.

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arild

Discussion Starter · #7 · Feb 1, 2015

Thanks for the replies. I will get a DEFA electric block heater and an interior heater installed. That should help heat up the car when it's below zero.

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mich

· #8 · Feb 3, 2015

arild said:
Thanks for the replies. I will get a DEFA electric block heater and an interior heater installed. That should help heat up the car when it's below zero.

I think you don't need that. Testted the last weekend at -15°C and took few minutes to get a comfortable interior. So it's not a problem to get a good temperature from cold weather.
It seems,instead, that once the temperature level is reached, the automatic control has some problem to keep it constant.

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Jeepers

· #9 · Feb 3, 2015

mich said:
I think you don't need that. Testted the last weekend at -15°C and took few minutes to get a comfortable interior. So it's not a problem to get a good temperature from cold weather.
It seems,instead, that once the temperature level is reached, the automatic control has some problem to keep it constant.

I read this about other climate control systems too though. I think that it is hard to keep the temperature completely constant. It kind of oscillates above and below the set temperature, and I imagine that the more extreme the outside temperature, the more difficult it is to keep the temperature consistent. Something to look at once the weather gets warmer again.

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arild

Discussion Starter · #10 · Feb 3, 2015

We can get down to -30°C a few days each winter and on those days, as well as on other below zero days, a preheated engine and a warm cabin are both good for the environment and good for me.

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