1950-1966 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
It ain't no colder in west Kansas than it is in east Nebraska, and when a 96 was my daily driver the heater would get the car warm enough to have me sweating within 3 miles of the house on the coldest day of the year. If your cooling system is unclogged and free-flowing and all your weatherstrip is in good shape (so the cold doesn't get in) you won't have a problem! Wind chill doesn't bother cars the way it does people (it measures the effect of cold + wind on exposed skin) so it's mostly a question of the absolute outside temperature vs. the ability of your engine to generate heat and your heating/cooling system to get it into the car interior. So if the engine heat is getting into the interior and air leaks aren't letting it out again, things will warm up pretty fast for you.
As best I could figure out by playing with it extensively, the little screw adjusts the proportioning between the control lever and thermostat coil in determining the position of the water valve. You want to have it adjusted so that when the thermostat coil is full-cold and the control lever is set to full-hot, the valve is fully open (full heat) so you'll get as much heat as possible on cold days. BUT you also need to make sure that when the control lever is set to full-cold the valve is fully closed (no heat) -- otherwise you won't be able to shut off the heater all the way in summer.
I couldn't figure out a really perfect procedure for setting it, so what I did was put the whole thing in the freezer for a while to get the coil cold, then set the screw so that the valve was fully closed when the control lever was in the full-cold position and fully open when the control lever was in the full-hot position. My idea was that this way, I'll have either full heat or no heat when I put the control lever at the ends of its travel -- while in the middle range, the coil will be able to regulate the heat.
By the way, when this system is working it's great -- almost like automatic climate control. I remember once in the fall I had to make a long trip in the 96. It took several hours and during that time a weather front went through and the temperature fell by about 20 degrees. However, once the engine had warmed up I had set the lever to a comfortable shirtsleeve temperature inside the car, and the thermostat had regulated this so well that I had never noticed it was getting colder outside -- quite a shock when I got to the end of the trip and stepped out of the car!
posted by 32.97.3...
, Tue, 9 Oct 2001 21:25:38
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
