WHATS UP WITH THE HEATER?

[ectonine]

1989 ford festiva carbureted model. heater not working. the blower motor is going but no heat is coming inside the cab. any ideas? are heaters a problem with these cars?

[mattswabb]

Remember that the heat will not come out the dash vents, only out of the floor and defogger.

matt

[ectonine]

why is that?

[batstiva]

That's how it's designed. Wonder tho, if Festies without A/C are the same way?

[gdawgs]

Yep, non-A/C are the same way. One of the dumb little things about Festivas. I can't figure out why they would have done that. They mustn't use heaters in Korea.

Festivas don't have the greatest heaters. They do ok when it's not really cold, but if it's -40° you better bundle up! They take forever to warm up, and when it's real cold, the engine will never get to normal operating temps, even if you go on a several hour road trip.
In the winter I always cover up the radiator and the hole where the A/C condenser goes with cardboard and that helps quite a bit.

[ectonine]

well i tried running the heater on the floor and on the defrost and sure enough it worked. thanks guys.

[danwheeler]

sooo weird. took me forever to figure that one out. still dont understand how they even block hot air from coming out the dash vents ???

i dont think it's a terrible idea though - i always run heat on the floor vents in other cars because it dries my eyes out otherwise.

[hellraiser6919]

i dont think thier routed to the vents. you could probbally mod it and put some hose in their so it comes out the vents.

[HappyMom]

i dont think thier routed to the vents. you could probbally mod it and put some hose in their so it comes out the vents.

The way the flaps are designed to route the air to different ducts, having heat form the dash vents is not obvious. The centre dash vents are directly connected to outside (cold) air and there is very little duct run to work around it. The air that goes through the heater core is on a different duct circuit.

I plan on blocking the floor vents (which I never use) and re-routing to the centre dash vents just in front of the flaps, using old vacuum cleaner hose. That way when I set it on floor, I will have some dash heat.