98 taurus heater

Check your thermostat. Sounds like it's stuck in the open position. Not uncommon, especially after a hot summer.

then the heater core would be constant flow. with the in and out hose booth being hot to the touch? sounds like it could be blocked.

thanks for the information!!

In news:alt.autos.ford, "Slammer" posted on Tue, 23 Sep

I have exactly the same problem. I checked under the dash and when I twist the temperature control knob, I can see the lever that controls the blend door move at its full range. When switching from cold to hot, I get warm air for a few seconds, but then it slowly cools until it's cool air, but not quite as cool as it is when it's on full cold.

I wondered if the heater core might be clogged, but in my past experience with clogged heater cores, the windshield defogger wouldn't defog the window effectively, yet this one does. It just does it with cold air, but very quickly.

I just can't seem to figure this one out.

Damaeus

I have a '00 Taurus that I've recently had A/C problems, and in my investigations, I found that the A/C compressor would engage when the blend selector was set to include the windshield defrost vents irrespective of the temperature control knob. I was told that this was a feature so that any air going to the windshield would pass over the evaporator and therefore be drier. My hypothesis would be that even though you have poor heating of your defrost air, you are at least passing _drier_ air onto the glass and therefore forcing evaporation by virture of the humidity differential.

That doesn't really gel with your previous anecdotal experience, however...

FWIW,

Robert

Robert posted:

Yes, this is all true.

My friend always gets mad at me when I run his A/C through the normal dash vents with the temperature set to warm. He says I'm going to mess up his air conditioner that way. I've explained to him a dozen times that the only difference between running the defogger and the A/C is that A/C comes out of the dash vents while the defogger comes out of the windshield vents. The compressor runs on both, precisely for the reason you describe. If my body is cold, then running "warm air conditioning" from the dash vents keeps me warm while also keeping all the windows defogged.

His Oldsmobile Alero actually has a feature I wish I had on my Taurus. He can run the compressor on ANY setting, including the foot heater vents. His has a button to engage the compressor on any blend setting. That would be nice in my Sable.

Damaeus