Don’t you just hate coming out to a cold car, truck or SUV in the middle of a Johnsburg winter? You have to sit and wait for the car to warm up before you feel the comforting heat blowing out of the vents. Until then, you hunker down and shiver for as long as it takes.

Winter in Johnsburg gets cold, darn cold. Some winters are colder than others but there’s no mistaking this for a tropical paradise in January or February – even in December, March of early April.

Universally, a car, truck or SUV will not come with an electric heater to provide warmth in the cabin in winter. The heat is provided by the vehicle’s engine. It’s all part of the heating and cooling system.

The way that it works is that you have a radiator, hoses, and passageways in the engine block and heads. You also have hoses that run from the engine to another small radiator under the dashboard. The latter radiator is called the heater core. 

As the engine operates, it produces heat. To keep the engine from overheating, the fluid running through the block/heads and hoses carries the heat to the radiator where air is drawn across the fluid-filled coils by a fan or fans. In the process, it cools the coolant-antifreeze inside the radiator.

The coolant-antifreeze also runs through the heater core. When enough heat builds up from the engine, the fluid inside the heater core is also hot. When you turn on the fan in the dash it draws air across the heater core. That air enters the car, truck or SUV cabin out of the vents. But if the engine hasn’t warmed up yet, there’s no heat to draw from the heater core.

It helps if you can run the vehicle for a while before you’re ready to go. That way, heat builds up and is available, generally, by the time you want it. But the most important thing you can do is to make sure the heating/cooling system serving your car, truck or SUV engine is operating a peak performance.

If the antifreeze-coolant is low, there may be points where the hoses and, even, the heater core are empty of fluid. In such cases, there is no heat to draw from the heater core.

Also, if the coolant-antifreeze is old, it may not operate up to specs. That subpar performance can reduce the fluid’s ability to carry heat from the engine. 

In some cases, with age, passages in the heater core become blocked. This reduces, and can block, the core’s ability to carry heat you can use to warm the cabin of your car, truck or SUV.

It’s important to remember that the heating-cooling system also provides heat for the defrosters. It’s almost impossible to keep the windshield from fogging if you don’t have the ability to blow any heat across the inside of the glass.

A subpar heating-cooling system can make for a less tolerable Johnsburg winter. The time to have the heating-cooling system in your car, truck or SUV is now, if you haven’t done so already.