Classic No heating, turning into a frozen mess

Hello chaps,

First off, vehicles a 93 3.9 (not soft dash/300tdi interior sadly)

Went to take the project to work today, got in, eventually started after 1 month sat under a tree,

first off noticed the front demist on works....on the passenger side,

but more iritatingly the car does not produce an ounce of heat from its vents,

it does cool air very well, but i'm assuming its not been bled proppery or the blend motor is seized,

Dont really want to go through the pain of taking the dash out of ole bess, but not really seeing another way round it

I'm not an engineer but owned four Classics over the last fifteen years & forked out for their upkeep/repairs on a semi-regular basis
To the best of my knowledge the RRC of your era does not have blend-motors, maybe on the later 'softies' & certainly the P38. If the coolant is circulating ok then I would suggest checking that the heat control is actually opening the valve or maybe the heater matrix needs bleeding. Classics (esp. from the '87 model year) had quite good heaters but the air-flap control can be a problem (my '87 uses both a vacuum pipe & an electrical solenoid, I assume your '93 would be the same) though you should still get some re-circulated heat with the fan on even if the flap fails to open - you should hear a 'clunk' noise from behind the central dash area when it does.

How do i gain access to this flap ?

bleeding the bugger tonight,

Could be interesting bleeding it up, only ever bled 300TDi's

Definitely not overheating? As you no doubt know, heater runs cold when engine is boiling! Good luck

V8 runs fine, its got an eratic strating issue but other than that, car runs fine, did 150 miles in October in one go, car didnt over heat,

Enleed it first then see if you get heat. Pipes to the heater are near side behind the engine, see if they get hot.
Common fault is for the heater matrix to leak and fill the heater with air, are your foot well carpets wet

If I remember correctly on my old classic, the heater pipes went through the firewall quite high up near the middle. As the highest point in the water system, they often became an airlock point, . . . . . . until I eventually replaced the water pump !!

Are the heater hoses actually connected, a leaking matrix tends to get bypassed, you never said if it ever produced heat.

Jonnyb1990 said:

How do i gain access to this flap

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Again assuming the set-up is the same as my '87 model year : There is an small bore rubber tube passing through the firewall to the left of the centre dash area & attaches to a vacuum unit that is controlled by a solenoid which in turn is activated by the fresh-air lever once the ignition is on or the key just turned to the first position. According to the LR workshop manual access requires removal of most of the dash BUT it is possible via the LH side (same as the pipe entry) after removal of the parcel try & some of the crappy cardboard panels surrounding it. Once you've access to the unit you may well find that the hose has simply come off the vacuum unit or the rubber has perished. If the vac unit or solenoid has packed up you may be able to wedge the flap in the open position.

On my 89 with the same set up you had to have the fan on first speed to pull the solenoid in to open the flap or no air through heater even at 70 mph ! just a thought.

kds said:

On my 89 with the same set up you had to have the fan on first speed to pull the solenoid in to open the flap or no air through heater even at 70 mph ! just a thought.

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Shouldn't be like that, if the control is left in the 'fresh air' position my flap usually opens/closes as soon as the engine is started/switched off but I've had to use the fan on the odd occasion, though never at high speed. The heat to my legs (where I feel the cold most) is in fact better that our modern daily The vacuum/solenoid system was a mod. for the '87 model year, previously the flap was actuated by a simple rod moved by the slider control that had a longer travel - but LR doesn't believe in KISS