 Gradual drgradation of heater efficiency
Hello, All
Our eight-year-old 318ti M44 is a UK spec without air conditioning and (as far as I am aware) filtration[1]. The heater, over the years, has taken longer and longer to produce really warm air, and now that the winter comes, this is annoying. A good, but cold, half an hour and 20km is now needed to get "full blast" heating.
The car has been run with clean coolant with corrosion inhibitors since new, and the coolant is still very clean. From new, the cooling system has lost 0.5 litre of coolant over the normal six-month period between services. I find this strange, but our non-official BMW specialist says that this is normal for these cars.
Any ideas where to start? I would, by instinct, look to bleeding the heater matrix but I am not sure if this is ever needed or how to go about it.
The BMW is my partner's car - mine has an air-cooled engine, so its heater is working well within about 30 seconds of the engine starting. I am sorry to say that I did not really notice the fall-off in performance of the BMW's heater - I just put it down to the normal delay that drivers of water-cooled cars have to endure.
Alistair
[1] Do any UK compacts have filtration? Can it be retro-fitted? | 
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