This may seem like an odd complaint. My heater works too well. Regardless of where I have the air ouput knob set, if I have the heater on, the passenger footwell gets damn toasty after about five minutes. Now, this doesn't particularly affect ME so much, since 95% of the time I'm driving, and the same thing doesn't happen on my side. But my passengers complain, and I've tried it to see how bad it is, and it really does get really uncomfortable...your shoes become too hot to touch, almost.

I've had the car in for this problem two winters ago, and they said they couldn't find any problems. I don't know if they bothered to try and reproduce the situation or not...my guess is they didn't. Is this just a "feature" of these cars; the end result of poorly-engineered engine/transmission/exhaust insulation? Does anyone else suffer from this? For reference, I have a '97 A-spec Tib.

 

Just wondering...what happens if you turn the blower on 2 and the knob to cold. does it blow in air that is warmer than outside air?

If so...it sounds like your heater core is always being supplied with hot coolant. There is a valve that should shut this off. My guess is that the valve, or the switch is broken.

 

I'll check it out. After my first wreck, which did front-end damage, after the repair, the passenger side wasn't getting half as cold an air supply as the driver's side was when I had the A/C on and blowing cold air. I took it in, and they did find problems, and fixed it. That solved that problem 100%. That winter, the footwell heat problem was brought to my attention, which is when I took it in and got a shoulder-shrug from the tech.

Thanks for the suggestion, Random. Should I start calling you Tom or Ray Magliozzi? wink.gif

 

Just took it out to dinner and tested the cold air output to the passenger side. It was fine...not warm of its own accord. ::shrug::