Well, as they say in Westeros, winter is coming and I need heat.
What a bummer of a diagnosis until I looked up how the heater valve worked. 12v with the valve off, 6v half and half, 0v heat all the way on. I unplugged the valve to give it zero volts and HEAT for the first time since I bought the car in 2022! Now I know that the contacts on the rheostat are dirty and that is why I had no heat! Thankfully it was not the heater core, which on a Touring requires the removal of the steering column along with the fracture bolts (ugh). My heater core is tucked up really far forward. And I did not need a $500 new heater valve, which would not have worked anyway! I turned the dial back and forth and the valve was opening and closing. Electrical contact cleaner should help too.
Despite my car being a very late '94, the heater box (no AC) is very different than the ones I have seen on YouTube. Is it the same box as the early cars? I have read but not seen that they require a lot more work than late cars. It's a bit strange that the Tourings should be different, but they did make very few of them, 100k out of 2.5m, so about 1 in 25 e30s was a grocery getter.
Great outcome I think.
What a bummer of a diagnosis until I looked up how the heater valve worked. 12v with the valve off, 6v half and half, 0v heat all the way on. I unplugged the valve to give it zero volts and HEAT for the first time since I bought the car in 2022! Now I know that the contacts on the rheostat are dirty and that is why I had no heat! Thankfully it was not the heater core, which on a Touring requires the removal of the steering column along with the fracture bolts (ugh). My heater core is tucked up really far forward. And I did not need a $500 new heater valve, which would not have worked anyway! I turned the dial back and forth and the valve was opening and closing. Electrical contact cleaner should help too.
Despite my car being a very late '94, the heater box (no AC) is very different than the ones I have seen on YouTube. Is it the same box as the early cars? I have read but not seen that they require a lot more work than late cars. It's a bit strange that the Tourings should be different, but they did make very few of them, 100k out of 2.5m, so about 1 in 25 e30s was a grocery getter.
Great outcome I think.
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