You guys with Limiteds, hows your climate control working?
 

I was just wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same thing I am.

My 2007 STI had climate control which when I set it to a specific temperature it not only adjusted fan speed but the temperature of the air that came out of the vents adjusted too. Setting it to 74 kept me pretty comfortable and I didn't have to touch it.

With the BRZ the climate control only seems to control fan speed. When I get in my car and its scorching outside I turn it down to low 70's and as it cools off the fan speed adjust accordingly but the air coming out is still freezing. forcing me to turn it up to 80-82 so its barely blowing. Even then its still lightly blowing ice cold air constantly. WTF! It's gotta be broken or was this part sourced from Toyota and this is how their climate control works.

Is anyone else experiencing this?

and just for so you know. I do have it on "FULL AUTO" and have high grade 3M tint.


Also inb4 "first world problems"

I don't really like having it on full auto. I prefer to adjust the fan speed and temperature separately.
That being said, when I adjust the temperature, I have noticed that the air coming out the vents does indeed change temprature slightly. I will experiment with the auto feature and see if that's different. I wouldn't think so, though.

I just manually set it to a temp and then a fan speed. I never really liked how the fan speed will jump up to full speed, even when it's not needed.

Also, curious, but does anyone notice that if you turn the controls on, the AC comes on as well? I'd be nice if it didn't do that, since I have to turn it off right after if I'm not going to use it. I have a feeling it'll put more wear on it in the future.

I have mine set at 69 and I don't think the car has ever really gone off of full blast. It feels cool but it has never actually been cold in the car at all. I also have darkest legal Llumar ceramic tint and it lowered the temperature in the car from 160 to around 140 when I get in after work.

So I wouldn't know... Sounds like you could just turn the knob down in speed if it gets cold. I had to do the same thing in my M3 because that bitch would make it snow

Mine works as it should. The temp of the air indeed does change depending on the setting. I only wish there was an option for cooler air without using the AC. But overall, I am content with it.

Same here.

Seems to be working this way for me. Of course it is 100 degrees outside so no car I drive seems to have ice cold AC :)

I think I might have a problem with mine then. No matter what temp I set it to, if the AC is off, the vents blow warm air.

With my other Subaru, the non-AC vent would blow at coldest, about 5-10 degrees warmer than outside air. (I suspect due to plumbing the air past the hot engine.). So when it's 68 outside, the vent will blow at 75 or so.

The engine in this car rejects a huge amount of heat into the passenger cabin; between Alcantara seats on the Ltd and turning off the A/C, I recall that some reviewers very easily started sweating when it was only 60 or 70 degrees out. Warm air coming out the vents, as @ashtray said, could just be ambient outside air warmed by proximity to the engine.

Do people notice the engine temperature running cool even when it's hot outside? My other subarus always ran with the temperature gauge showing at the mid position.

I think you've misunderstood. The AC needs to be on in order to properly use the climate control. I even mentioned that without the AC on the air is never cool. Your climate control works just like mine does.

I don't quite understand how the air could get cooler without the A/C on. What I meant was that with the A/C on, the temp of the air seems to vary with the temp setting

After proper warmup, I am a hairline below dead center on the temp gauge. Even in this heat we are having.

I've only used full auto once, to make sure the button works.. I prefer manual control.

I'll have to check this on the way home today.

On another note, how do you turn on the air, sans AC, without having to press AUTO which turns the AC on automatically? I've been having to press AUTO to get the fan going with the AC and then seperately press AC off to just get the air to blow without the AC being on.

My car works just fine. I've noticed that on shorter rides, I get nothing but full cold air but temps level off after a while and full auto works just fine. I cruise to work with it set at 72 and it's quite comfortable.

In my BMW 325i, when I set the climate control to 65, without A/C, the air becomes noticeably cooler (still not A/C cold of course), even if it's a warm day. I guess I was just expecting similar functionality from the BRZ.

I think there's some confusion about how the temp control works in auto mode. Think of it like the thermostat in your house. You're not setting the temperature for the air coming out of the vents, you're setting the temperature you want the cabin to be. So if it's hot inside and you set the auto climate control to 73 degrees, it will crank the A/C to get the cabin temp to that level as quickly as possible. As the cabin nears 73 degrees, it will ease the fan speed back until it's only lightly moving air to maintain the temp.

My car stays perfectly comfortable in Auto mode. I recently went on a long road trip, spending 14 hours in the car in one day with temps in the 90s outside. I set the cabin temp to 73 degrees and the auto HVAC kept the inside perfectly comfortable for the entire trip.

Granted, I have 35% ceramic tint all around, so that helps. But the auto HVAC still kept the inside at an even temp without large fluctuations.

I thought it was like that for most vehicles. Without A/C it's always cooler on my Civic, Sienna and Corolla. You just have to put the dial towards the blue obviously.

didn't really use the full auto much.... since we had weird weather recently in Philly, I've been adjusting manually. I might've used full auto once, but it was so hot out, it didn't seem to be going full blast as I've seen other cars...

I usually have my AC on all year... guess my nose is sensitive or whatever, but w/o it on, it seems to dry my nose out in other cars... so out of habit, I always have it on...

I used to think that auto climate control was for lazy people, but since then I've really taken a liking to the one-touch operation, especially when driving. One press of the button and the car automatically reads ambient air temp, checks the sunlight sensor and makes adjustments to the system all in an instant. To a tech junkie like me, I feel that's pretty frickin' cool.

If it is cold outside it doesn't count :)

But really, think about it, how could the air get cooler than the ambient temperature without going through the air conditioning? The cool/warm dial just acts like a mixer to control the amount of either cooled air or heated air that gets mixed with the ambient air flow.

In some systems there is no explicit "A/C" on indicator. You just control the temperature with the dial -- the system calculates the mix of warmed/cooled air that need to be mixed with untreated air to get to your target temperature and then once there it dynamically adjusts fan speed, mix, etc.

Nope it works even if it's hot outside and the A/C off, you just need your vehicle to be completely warmed up. Why would they put the dial there if it doesn't even work?

In case you guys didn't know. Like I didn't. You just turn the fan speed knob to turn on just the fan without having to press "auto" to turn the air on.

OK, I don't know for a fact that you don't have a magical Civic or Corolla that can magically cool the air without the benefit of an air conditioner, but the BRZ owner's manual specifically says that turning the dial to cool with the A/C explicitly off simply blows air that is ambient temperature.

Added: On most cars, BRZ and probably your Civic or Corolla, without the air-conditioning on, the dial simply controls the mix of ambient air with air from the heater core. In the red, you are getting air from the heater, on the blue side, pure ambient air. Now depending on the ambient air temperature and the speed of the fan, it may seem cool in the blue side and is indeed cooler than heated air. Note that any air with a lower temperature than your current skin temperature will feel cool -- but it is not necessarily "cooled" air.

I think you guys are just messing aroud with the system too much. Is anyone just leaving it on AUTO and putting the temp to 72? That's how I do it in every car I've used with auto climate control and the systems all seem to work great. Even my friend's 1990 Supra worked this way. It's designed so you can pick a temp, set and forget.

I think you may just have a system that turns on the AC without indicating that it is on. On my Accord if you turn off the A/C but turn on defrost the car intermitantly runs the A/C compressor to help dehumidify the air. Maybe you are seeing a similar light use of the A/C compressor even though the A/C switch and indicator light are off. If that is what you want, in the BRZ just turn on the A/C and set the temp and let the climate control cycle the compressor.

My experience in the BRZ is the CC works similarly to my Accord. The problem in selecting a temperature is just that the temperature on your skin and the temperature at the climate control's thermometer sensor can be different. You can try adjusting the vents to not directly blast right on your skin, but then you need to wait for the whole car to cool before it feels comfortable. In both cars I just move the temperature knob around depending on how cool the air feels. The result is sort of semi-automatic: I need to make some adjustments, but not as many as with a manual A/C system.

yeah but the BRZ has "AUTO" and "FULL AUTO". I assume FULL AUTO means set it and forget it, but I'm not finding it to be the case. The air coming out the vents is to damn cold forcing me to set it to FULL AUTO at 82 degrees.

The temperature you set is not the temperature of the air coming out -- it is the target temperature. If there is a big difference in temperature between the outside ambient air and the temperature you are setting, then the air coming out of the vents could be very cold because the system is trying to get to your target temperature as fast as possible.

You can do what you are doing and cool the car in stages, or you could adjust the vents so they don't blow directly on you.

I felt the exact same thing. I have a premium but my AC is marginally cooling my car at "full cold" setting ,where it should be chilled for the car of this size. I feel definitely hot (sarcasm intended)in this car.

My auto mode works as expected. I set it at 72-73 degrees and initially the fan blows faster and as the cabin cools it slows down. Sometimes in my other cars once I am comfortable I'll take it out of auto mode and just set the fan to low which seems to work.

To the OP, maybe your car has a thermostat issue with the climate control?

Phenomenal

pardon me if I sound stupid but, if it gets too cold, can't you just turn it off?

I adjust the fan speed manually. Happy with things!

Auto climate and auto wipers. Both think they know better than you. Both are wrong.

Sadly the climate control console on the limited looks about 10x better than the premium and FR-S. :(

I raise the temperature on the HVAC if it's starting to get too cold. That way I can maintain a comfortable temperature.

Works great and looks good

A lot of people seem to misunderstand what A/C is. It's not COLD air. It's a method of maintaining a temp set by the thermostat. Everyone here is comparing the A/C to the compressor, that's what turns on to make the air colder. I always have A/C on even in the winter. Set to the right temp, it will process all the air and dehumidify it. In winter with the temp set at 80 for example, you only get hot air. That's how it's supposed to work.

If the temp goes higher than that set, it will turn on the compressor to introduce the cold air at that point (some cars mix the air, other just shoot out the full on cold stuff,) and it will be as cold as it can be until it reaches the set temp.

I have mine set to 70, over 1500 miles since I got it and I haven't touched it once and the temp is PERFECT all the time. Now if you sit in the sun at a light or something, it will FEEL hotter but the A/C unit will maintain the temp you set either way.

The air coming out of the vents is cold, but not as cold as my '06 Dodge. It's plenty to handle the 90-95 degree weather we have in Wyoming, any hotter and it might not seem as cold I suppose. I have not had any warm air come out of the vents, ever, with the compressor on. The compressor isn't always on either btw, when it gets colder out like at night, or when the temp falls below the temp you set, then it will push warmer air.

Works fine when outside temp is above what I want. When it gets cooler outside, HVAC seems to struggle, especially ambient temp is right between my setting and my passenger's setting.