Imagine if your car didn’t have any heat as you drove through this Johnsburg winter. You could bundle up and get used to it but it wouldn’t be the same; it wouldn’t be like those days when the car warmed up and warm air poured from the vents filling the cabin with comforting heat.

When you’re warm inside the car, the cold passes by outside with little effect on your comfort inside. Winter is like a movie you watch from your seat in the car. From Johnsburg to any destination in the Northern hemisphere, you’re cocooned in an environment that separates you from cold outside.

That heat you’re counting on to keep you warm while driving does more than provide comfort; it also keeps your windshield from frosting as you drive. You count on the defrosters for the ability to see where you’re going. They help to keep you and your loved ones safe, not to mention people in other cars you might run into if you couldn’t see.

Can you count on the heat to fill your car’s cabin with warm air and to defrost the windshield? You certainly hope you can place your trust in the heating capacity of your vehicle. But can you?

Like every other mechanical aspect of your car, the heater/defroster are designed to work a certain way. As the operator of the vehicle, you have certain controls you can use to adjust the heater and defroster.

You can adjust the fan to blow the air into the cabin of the car at different levels, or shut it off so it doesn’t blow at all. You can choose which way, overall, that the air is directed. With this knob on the dash, you can choose to direct the air into the windshield (as defrosters), directly into the cabin or down onto your feet. Most cars also come with options for choosing two of those directions at the same time.

The individual vents come with directional blades so you can put the air almost precisely where you want it. And you can open and close individual vents as you please. But you’re still counting on the heating system to work.

The heart of the heating system is the coolant/antifreeze that keeps your car’s engine from freezing up or overheating. That fluid also runs through a small radiator, called a heater core. The fan inside the car pulls air through the core and, as the air passes, the heat transfers from core to the cold air passing through. When it enters the car, it’s no longer cool.

Leaks in the coolant/antifreeze system will deplete the fluid and, without that element in the heater core, there’s no heat to transfer. In some cases, particularly with older cars, the tubes running through the heater core get clogged and it no longer works effectively. In some cases, the heater core is where a leak is found – the heater core or the hoses running to and from the core.

The directional dampers that operate to move their air around when you make choices with the knob on the dash can also break. But, if all of these components are operating the way they’re supposed to work, you can count on having comfort-giving warmth inside your car this Johnsburg winter.