Funky 86 Heating Issue?
 

I have a 2017 86 860 Special Edition (like a limited), with 15k. It was a dealer lot princess for 3 years gaining 8k miles as a loaner of sorts.



Usually at 70 degrees I'm sweating my butt off in this car. Usually have to open a window or turn to defrost + floor heat to make that happy medium. I had just stopped for a coffee a short distance from my house and was switching the controls. Noticed it seemed to blow different but ignored it. Driving home on a cold day a few days later noticed NO AIR or HEAT coming to the floor. I always use manual settings and even at full heat and full fan, there was nothing. Ok made an appointment with the dealer.



Dropped car off at dealer, they found nothing wrong after having it in the shop maybe 30 minutes. It was working fine apparently. Talking with the tech and the advisor, they said they let it warm up and it worked normally. I was thinking maybe a blend door froze up just right or something similar and happened to dethaw in the warm shop.



But having paid diag for nothing and still noticing an issue, I'm at a loss. The heat works yes, it blows yes. But neither is as powerful as before on the floor setting, and I'm turning up the heat more than before. I'd say both are at like 80%. I'm happy it works decently, but upset I've had it 10months and the dealer says its fine. Various threads here have varied between the heat in these being weirdly cold on the floor or boiling like older Toyota's.



Does anyone have any idea what I can look for or similar issues they found fixes for? I'm going to check the coolant this morning to make sure its in the proper place, but with the mileage and history I'm not sure where to start. I havent seen any posts on a issue quite like mine.


Thanks!

ok
This may sound stupid. But might it have something to do with the weather? It's colder now than it used to be.
I imagine up there in Connecticut it's really cold right about now.

Not the same car, but I had what seems to be a similar experience with my Civic years ago. The fan would sometimes not turn on to circulate heat/cold air. Other times the fan would hardly blow any air at all and would make odd sounds. Sometimes the car a/c would feel cool, sometimes it wouldn't (regardless of ambient air temperature).



The shop could find nothing wrong with it as the refrigerant levels were fine, but I kept experiencing the problem intermittently. Turns out my gen of Civics had crappily-designed blower motors that would sometimes act like this. I bought a new design blower motor, popped it in myself in 10 minutes, and the car has blown consistently hot/cold air ever since.


(You probably already know this...)Also, be sure you have the recirculate button depressed as that can help with more consistent air temperature regulation inside the cabin.

when was the last time you changed the cabin air filter?

This - ^

Back-in-the-day, I had a 1970 MGB-GT and lived in California. I never got cold in the car. Then I moved to Connecticut and during the winter, I thought I'd freeze to death driving that same car - :confused0068:

Oh, could have been the difference between 32 degrees F and -15 degrees F ..... :D

A piece of cardboard in front of the radiator fixed that situation - :thumbsup:

Seriously, as mentioned, check the cabin air filter and check the fuses.

:party0030:

OP, you live in CT so I'm going to confirm the above that it's temperature based.

Cars sold in the US are designed to not overheat in AZ which means they're over-cooled in the winter when temps drop. Ours are overly warm in nice temps because Subaru engines are spec'd to run a little hotter than others (IIRC 180F vs 150F for other engines, someone correct me if I'm off). Today it's 19F here in NE Ohio and my coolant barely reached normal operating temp after a 5 mile 50/50 city/highway trip. This has happened with every car I've had here, and it's especially noticeable if you get straight on the highway and never do any stop and go because the amount of airflow makes it very difficult for the coolant to reach operating temp.

Put a small block of foam in front of your radiator to reduce the amount of airflow for the winter. It's the simplest thing and I'm 95% certain it'll fix the issue for you.

So cabin filter was done recently as part of the ToyotaCare Maintenance interval or it should have been. Will double check. Recirculate is always on to get the heat pumping quicker. It has been cold as of recent, and I do expect a change there. But when the issue happened it was like, 34 or warmer outside, and similar temps over the last few days until today felt different.

Don't forget that defrost is actually running your air conditioner to remove the humidity that would otherwise fog up your windows. If frost/fog isn't an issue I'll run the fans on 1 without defrost until the temp is past the first tick to keep the cold cabin air from pulling more heat from the coolant during warm up.

You can always check things like a blocked vent or duct, coolant levels to verify you didn't miss a bigger issue, kinks in lines, etc. that could all affect your coolant and heating system performance, but in the end it's really an extension of the engine cooling system. I find that heating is weak short term if I can't do a little stop and go to let thermal energy build up, and way too strong after about thirty minutes.

The footwell heaters in these cars have their work cut out for them and take a long time to heat the air up down there. I have found that there is little that can be done to speed the heat up at your feet. The main thing seems to be the cabin layout simply does not let enough warm air circulate. When really cold just reach down sort of between the seat and console and touch the floor. The upper part of the car can be downright hot and the air passing under the seat from the rear is still frigid. The footwell vents can be working perfectly fine and your feet will still freeze. I have tried every possible combination of settings and it takes about 20 minutes for it all to even out so you are pretty much screwed on a short trip.