My BMW heater gets hot and blows hot air when it is stopped and sitting still. Then vent ton the right of the steering column blows cold air the other vents blow warm air when. Drive, but not hot. It only gets hot when I sit still…they replaced the thermostat and have ran all the codes but cant find anything wrong. The shop I use told me. Should take it th.e dealer and have them look at it. The deal told me the would star wi replacing the radior then if that doesn’t work they would replace the heater core.the car is in outstanding shape but the deal just wants me to pay for exploratory surgery basically. Help
First off, do you have the center vent turned to hot, three red dots? If not, you won’t get hot air from it.
Is the coolant overflow tank filled to the proper level? Have you bled the air from the system?
WHAT does the dealer want to replace? The radio? The radiator? Neither makes sense. If the temp gage is in the correct range, you don’t need a radiator or a radio.
If you feel the heater hoses where they go through the firewall into the heater core, are they approximately the same temperature, that is HOT, when the engine is warmed up?
Is your 325 new enough to have the dual dials to select the tempurature for the driver and passenger? That would be one other thing I’d suspect. I think that feature debuted in '92 with the E36 body.
Is the shop you use well versed in BMWese? If not, find one that is. It seems to me that your local dealer may be incompetant.
BMW has made a “325” for many years, what year is your car? There was a group of e-36’s (most of the 90’s) that actually suffered from water pump impreller failure (I hesitate to say this is your trouble as it is hard for me to believe there is an original water pump car still out there). Let’s start with the year of your car please.
The center vent is turned to hot, but the wheel is very losses adn very easily rolls back in forth, I first thought that it may be the problem. The palce I take the car to only works on BMW, Porshce and a few other Europeon cars and they are held in high regards in our city, so I thought They could figure it out.
I haven;t done any of the testing you mentioned, but I just had my 60,000 mile service work done and the themostat replaced, so I guess I took it for granted that they woudlhave checked all the basis stuff. I’ve never had any over heating issues at all and I do have the dual dials driver adn passenger side controls,but the vents are all the same temp except for the 1 just to the right of my steering column and it is alwasy cold.
The dealer said they wanted to first replace the radiator, then maybe the heater core, It’s rediculous that they want me to do exploritory surgery on the car and then still have the possibilty that those things may not fix the problem.
I"m just at a loss…