Mini Cooper blog post

The Show
1

re: A Gentle Driver Wants to Bring the Heat.

I don’t know from Minis or Electric Cars, but every car I’ve owned or rented has had a coolant temperature gage on the dash. (Well, not my first car - the gauge was on the radiator cap in front.). My wife wants the heat on if it gets below about 55 outside, and I wait until the I see the gauge move off the bottom, and I turn the heat on. Sure enough in another block or two we get warm air. So why doesn’t Mary just see how fast she can get the pin to move on her Mini? What am I missing?

2

Probably because she is just like my wife and expects instant heat when it is cold and instant cold a/c when it is hot and the reason she can’t get it is because I am doing something wrong or I bought the wrong car.

3

There’s two different thermostat designs, bypass, and non-bypass. The cars I’ve had with non-bypass thermostats took a little longer to produce heat than my one and only bypass thermostat car, the Corolla. Maybe that has something to do with it on the Mini.