I know this is usually a good thing, but my car is running so cool that I can't get enough heat out of it for winter! The temp guage doesn't even go up to the first mark after 100 degrees! On my other 3rdgen, the temp varies between the 2nd and 3rd marks (100 degrees being the "1st"), and the heater works great. What would cause this? Hope you guys can help.

 

Possibly someone changed it to a lower temperature thermostat in the past?

Go to Autozone and get the recommended thermostat if your gonna drive it in Winter, probly a 190* or so...
Once the car warms up, you should have no problem getting heat then.

 

Someone probably removed the stat or it's stuck open. Even a 160 stat will throw lukewarm heat and give some guage indication. 195 is the stock temp for all GM engines in the last 20 or so years. The only one that ran a 180 was the LT-1 I think.

 

I also believe you either have a stuck open stat or it might even be missing. I found that on one of my cars. At idle it warmed up nice. Driving.....&%$* was it cold!

 

too cold is not good at all!! even worse in the winter..

get a 195 like said, a 180 will be ideal and could be used throughout the year.. so you dont have to swap it again and again

 

Unless you live in So Cal where a 160 is fine all year

 

my 160 stat works fine for me and the winters here in PA get pretty bad. I get really good heat out of my car even though I dont know where its going to come out because my controler is a POS.

 

Ok I got a nice 195 stat, and now the car heats up to about the first mark, which is a little better than before, but still not enough to warm the interior, especially on a cold-*** Oklahoma day. What are some other things I can try now?

 

It could be that the selector for cold & hot needs to be adjusted.

Perhaps when the selector is all of the way to hot, it's still getting cold mixed in.

I have a similar problem with my 84 Z, but in my case I think it is b/c the core is smaller than original...........

Perhaps it is a smaller heater core than the other cars have.

 

Anybody know where I can find a diagram of the components of the heater/ac system, including vacuum lines and such? The part that most confuses me is the stuff in the dash, behind the controls.

Along with not getting hot enough, I have a few other problems, including the fan speed switch freely turns and the fan speed doesnt change (which i assume is just a simple mechanical problem with the control ****), and second, that the air doesn't always blow out where it is supposed to, like on MAX and NORMAL it will still blow through the defroster vent.

Anyways, it would be most appreciated if someone could direct me toward a diagram or something to fix my system. Thanks!

 

Ditto!

 

sounds like you ought to just change your whole control head altogether... can't help you with the diagrams at the moment since I'm away from my home where the books are... your fan speed switch is probably broken... your defroster only is pretty much caused by the selector switch on the control head... there is a vacuum switch and an electrical switch on there that are like linked together so that when you select a/c, you get air out the dash vents, etc. on the back of that vacuum select switch, there's like a manifold where about 5 vacuum tubes come together. One is the vacuum line coming in, the rest go to the corresponding vents... you may have a leak there, or somewhere else. most likelyy there, though... an easy fix (so I've heard) is to remove that connection and apply some vaseline with a q-tip in each of those tubes. A more drastic solution is to "separate" each of those tubes and attach them individually and secure them with a small zippy-tie. That's what I did, works like a champ. That tube system is a harness type of thing that if you have to replace, goes all up in the dash to each of the control thingies... hope this helps, but in a nutshell, you can probably solve the problem fairly easily. The vacuum and electrical switches can be bought at the GM place, not sure about the fan switch...

 

Before you go and start swapping out the controls. Take the levers and slide them back and forth all the way til you hear the blower door opening and closing do this a c ouple times with both levers what its doin is resetting the controls dont know why its works but was recommended to me by a mechanic at the Dealership and DAMN IF IT DIDNT TAKE CARE OF IT