Owners' Stories

This car is excellent overall except that the passenger's compartment gets hotter then it should be after I've driven the car for 5 minutes especially in the summer. This only occurs after I've stopped and parked the car for a short while because a heat transfer from the hot engine compartment to the passenger compartment via the hot water lines allows the whole ventilation system to get hot and because when the car is parked there is no longer cool air running through the air ducts to keep them from getting hot. This problem occurs because the heater vent gets partially stuck open. I live in Southern California so I normally just like to run the fan only and get fresh air. The problem can be overcome by running the air conditioner. Because 350Z's run pretty temperature hot anyway and transfer a lot of that heat via the radiator fluid under the dashboard to the heat exchanger, I prefer to bypass the heater by re-routing the heater hose. It works great and I believe that it helps to keep the electronics under the dashboard cooler (particularly under the center console) and over the longer period helps to prevent wiring malfunctions.