Ok, I have a couple of question especially about the heater since it's winter. So, basically what i want to know is what's the fuel consumption for the heater. I'm trying to maximize my mpg since i drive around a lot. So my question is this... how does the heater in our neon works? Does it take the heat given off by the engine and reuses it for the car heater? or does it have a specialized heater that's powered by the car (meaning using additional gas to create the heat) for the heater? I ask this because if the neon uses additional fuel to power the heater then next time i'm just going to wear more layers of clothes and not turn the heater on in order to maximize mpg. So, basically it's like what others said about the a/c... that the a/c uses fuel to power the compressor which in turn lower the fuel economy. So does the heater works this way too? Also, if we just leave the control **** (the one which decides if it's blue (cold) or red (hot) air that comes in) at the red does this uses fuel for the heat even if the fan **** is off? Sorry about the long post but i'm just trying to get this clear and hopefully be able to save some money on fuel

 

I'm 99% sure that the heater does NOT use any more gas whether it is on or off. The heat is there whether u use it or not, pretty sure it gets the heat from one of the lines from the radiator routing the fluid thru a device that takes the hot fluid and converts it to hot air. It's not at all like the A/C pump that uses power from the motor..I.E. more gas... to run it. Only factor would be the blower motor which would not even be noticable in MPG.

 

excellent... thanks for the answers man

 

what he said is true. the coolant circulates thru the system and goes into a heat exchanger (heater core) located in the dash all year long. when you call for heat by selecting the warm air selector, a flap opens up and directs cold outside air into the heat exchanger and heats it, then that air goes into your car. if you select the recirculate or max air then it does that same thing except it uses air from inside your car to recirculate. just so you know, your air conditioning comes on when your defrost is selected, even when you have the heat selector in the red. the a/c dries the air so that your windows will de-fog.

 

heater? weird... I use the AC in the winter.

 

Yeah you can shut the hell up .

 

good answer haha..it was -27 here today, [sm=bs.gif]

 

wait there are negative numbers on a thermometer now?!? i thought it only went down to about 70.lol

 

that's funny!... can relate tho...

took a trip to my wife's country..Manila, Philippines...

all the cars there had NO heater controls at all....only A/C!.. so no red on the temp control, just blue!

 

Ooh, that would be sweet. I'm not a fan of the color red at all, so blue would be a big improvement. Is there a country-specific version that has white/blue HVAC labels? Or did I just see a custom job?