It’s early in the morning. You just hopped into your car and are about to head off to work only to realize that your car has been sitting out in the cold at night which has essentially turned your car into an ice box. Upon starting the ignition, you immediately reach to turn the dial on your dashboard to activate your car’s heating system and begin to level out as you can feel the warmth spread throughout your car.
Have you ever wondered how this process takes place?
Heating System Main Components
Your vehicle’s heating system merges with other systems within your vehicle to aid in keeping you warm. Your engine cooling system shares some parts with your heating system. The components working to generate heat in your vehicle include:
- Water pump
- Heater Core
- Antifreeze
- HVAC
- Blower Motor
- Thermostat
These are the components that a majority of makes and model’s heating system are made up of. On the contrary, there are specialized vehicles that contain more particular parts.
How Your Heating System Operates
It should go without saying, that your engine needs to run in order to heat up the antifreeze in the engine. The job of the antifreeze is to transfer the heat from the engine to the compartment. It takes several minutes of the engine running to generate the warmth before you begin to notice a change in temperature.
As soon as the engine warms up, the thermostat then opens and welcomes in the antifreeze to run through. Soon after that, heat is drawn in from the engine and carried by the antifreeze to the core of the heater. Just like the radiator, the heater core is thought of as the “heat exchanger” and is located in the interior of the heater housing on your dashboard. The blower motor then comes into play by taking air from the heater core and detaching heat from the antifreeze.
We Repair Heating Systems
If your heating system is out of service, don’t suffer another minute! We have mechanics who have repaired heating systems on many vehicles and know what they’re doing. Whether you’ve putting it off or just realized an issue, bring in your vehicle today to get it taken care of. Call now!