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Lack of interior heat - X-Trail

14K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  BrianJ  
#1 ·
I drive a 2005 Nissan X-Trail LE and I'm dissapointed with how much interior heat gets produced. I live in a Canadian prairie climate where it can get down to -30 degrees celcius on occasion in the winter. When this happens it seems the only way to get decent heat is to keep the car in motion. When idling it is very difficult to get any heat. Yesterday in a coffee shop drive thru, it just seemed to be blowing cool air. I know our climate is harsh, but it's not that bad. My wife's 2003 Honda Civic for example still produces great heat in these circumstances and in fact she often turns down the heat. How unfair!

Is this common for this model? Being less than 3 years old and less than 65k on it, I'd be suprirsed if it's mechanical...buy hey, you never know. Thoughts anyone? Maybe this model had no business being introduced into the Canadian marketplace?

Thanks!
 
#2 ·
Have you felt the inlet and outlet hoses for the cabin heat exchanger to see if they get cooler when the engine is idling as opposed to when the engine is running normally ?
 
#4 ·
There are actually 2 thermostats in the Xtrail.
One is the main thermostat for cooling the cylinder head and the other is the water control valve for cooling the block and opens at a higher temp than the main thermostat.

Which one were you referring to ?
 
#6 ·
I live in the same conditions and don't have that problem; I can sit idling in the Safeway parking lot waiting for the wife and it blows good heat. It does take a little while from a cold start, but most modern efficient engines seem to take a little while before they have heat to spare. On the other end of the spectrum, I will say that on a very hot, humid day in the summer, the air conditioning is fairly useless when idling.