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I've found the warm up times to be very consistent, fastest was the 98 Mercedes SLK230 in half a mile, slowest I don't remember. There is an overpass to Busch Gardens about 1.5 miles east of my house and every car I have owned would be at operating temp, with plenty of heat by the time I reached that overpass. If I leave the temperature control on max hot, which is useless with a cold engine, add another half a mile to reach full operating temperature.
Before I replaced the thermostat in the Sentra, which was stuck wide open, it took 6 miles to reach the same temperature.
Now, if you are using engine off coasting, and it is extremely cold outside then I could see the coolisng system temp dropping below thermostat opening point and I expereinced that first hand when the fan belt (also water pump) broke on my 76 Z car. I used engine off coasting, which spun the clutch fan, with airflow, and turned the water pump.After 10 miles the temperature was below the normal operating range, even with no fan belt to drive the pump or turn the fan.
Bottom line, if your thermostat is 10 years old and your car takes a long time to warm up andyou are not using engine off coasting then you should check your thermostat.
It requires no tools.
Start the engine and keep you hand on the top (or exit) cooling hose. It will not warmup much at all until the stat opens, then it will become too hot for you to hold your hand on it very quickly. Thats a good thermostat. If it starts to warm upbut takesa long time to get hot, or does not get very hot at all, you have a bad thermostat.
In very cold temperatures, if your car will allow it, use recirculate and max hot settings with lower fan speeds, the same process to get the best cooling with ac in the summer.
It should be easy to understand why it will work much better to reheat the same air repeatedly, versus trying to get -20 degree air to 120 degrees in a single pass over the heater core, in many cases through a cowl screen that is blocked off from any air flow by ice or snow.
If you can't get heat and everything previously suggested fails to help, then block off air flow to the radiator, but remember the heater core is not apart of the radiator circuit so when you set the temperature on a cold engine it can take much longer to get it warm and in extreeme cold the heater core itself may have more capacity that the engine needs to stay too cold.
regards
mech
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