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I was browsing v6performance.net, when I came up on an interesting thread topic.


These guys claim that if you turn on your heater during and after a race, it will help to cool the engine down. The logic sorta makes sense. Water is circulated to the engine, routed to the cabin, and has a fan blown over it to push heat into the cabin.

Essentially, like another radiator! However, i'm sure you get a little power drainage from running the fan.


I suggest putting the windows down so you don't cook.


Is this true? Has anyone tried it?

 
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I have heard of this

Plus on an episode of OVERHAULIN
the car would overheat
so they had to drive with the heater on to keep the engine cooler

 
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i too have heard of someone doing it. i think its pretty reliable cuz it was my shop teacher

 
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just make it go to your feet so u dont see it as much

 
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Yes it does work...quite well actually, if you can stand the heat on a summer day in texas.

I used to have an 87 civic hatch that overheated everytime I drove it, only way I could get her home in traffic was blasting the heater. She was fine at 70+, but once you slowed down, the heater went on or you pulled over. My feet always smelled like *** when I got home.

 
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I noticed when i drive with teh heater on the car is slower
so it may be good for after a run at the track

 
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back in high school, my friend had a capri, for him to drive it around, he had to turn on the heater full blast, if not, it'll overheat. and we even asked our AP physics teacher about it and he said that doing that it'll even save a little more gas since the engine would be cooler. so i guess this works.

 
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hmm... how about just running the fan? would that work? or does it have to be the heater?

 
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probably don't need to have the heater ON ... but just open the windows a little and put the temp to the highest ... since it acts like a heater anyway

 
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i think when you turn on the heater, you're bringing the air from around the engine so it'll cool it (maybe i'm way wrong on this one, if you can't tell, i'm a noob).

 
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Heaters in car actually take the heat from the engine. That's why everycar has a heater but not every car has an A/C. Because a heater in a car is basically a fan blowing hot air from the engine into the cabin.

 
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Yes it works. Here in sac it gets pretty hot and when I used to get stuck in traffic in my ford truck it used to get hot so I had to turn on the heater to keep it from overheating. I have since figured out alot about cooling and a electric fan would have cured my motors heating prob. As for the heater function.. there is a heater core inside your car(small radiator) when you flip the heater switch it will open a vlave to let engine water run through it, a fan then pulls or pushes inside or outside air through the heater core, it is using engine coolant heat to warm the vehicle.

 
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after the race I think it's a good idea to open the hood and turn on the heat....

 
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Don't you remember that movie cannonball?? When john candy was driving that car (mercedes I think)... He had to run the heater to cool the engine..

 
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rep for you cuz you can handle that heat!!! wtf!! I'd pull over it gets way to effin hot for that in TX...

 
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yeah for sure it works. I had a 90 galant that the thermostat went out on the radiatior. only way to get it home that day was to turn on the heater. quite ironically i had just heard this from "Click and Clack" on Car Talk the last weekend when my dad was listening to it. but like everyone else has said the heat is hard to deal with in the summer.

 
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Yep it definitely works. I had an 86 civic that would overheat easily. All summer I would have to drive it to work and back on a 35-mile commute with the heat blasting!! Yeah it was hot as hell and I'd always get home drenched in sweat, but it kept my car running. In a sentimental way, I kinda miss that old civic. I gave it away with 275,000 miles on it (no joke).

But, I digress. Basically this situation is easily understood by the laws of thermal dynamics. I'm no engineer, but here's my understanding of it:

Every car has coolant/antifreeze to regulate the temperature of the engine. As the coolant circulates through and around the engine it "soaks away" heat and goes to the radiator where the fan blows on it and cools it off further. Every car also has a "heater core" which uses the hot coolant to heat up the car's cabin. Basically when you turn on your heat, coolant gets diverted to the heater core (usually situated close to the car's cabin) and a fan blows heat into the cabin from there. Thus, excess heat is being diverted away from your engine and given an "extra passageway" where it can cool further than if it had only passed through the radiator. Viola!

My first encounter with this concept happened in high school. It was 1989 (yeah I'm old! ) and I had a 79 Chevy Malibu (My first car) and the heater core got clogged and exploded. Because it was situated in front of the passenger floorboard it leaked coolant all over the floor of my car!!! Anyways, needless to say, from that moment on, I knew how the car's heater worked.... Hope this makes sense to people Happy driving!!!

 
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I feel ya on that one, it was a sad parting with my old civic. She decided to throw a rod at right at 187k...that was wieeerrd.

 
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Uh, I was gonna say it works, but if you cant figure that out by now, I think you may have been in tx w/ the heat on and cooked your brains

 
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hi i am in florida and i use my car for deliveries, i wanna make mr ca run cooler im looking for a performance thermostat that opens at a lower temperature, i found some jackson racing ones for older civics but i dont know if they will fit, i also wanna buy a performance fan aswell and do anything possible to make my car run cooler, does anyone know where i can get a high performance radiator cap for sale ?

 
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get a better upper grill that lets more air in, make sure you get all the air bubbles out of the coolant, vented hood maybe? and just make sure there's good circulation in the engine bay.

 
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good ideas, anymore ? know where i cna buy any of that stuff ?