Great heater performance, does my B6 have an aux heater fitted?

[andrewturner]

From a cold start on an 8-degree C morning I'm getting warmer-than-ambient air through the vents within a 1/4 mile of tame driving - happy days! :D Is this normal or does my car likely have an auxiliary heater? I've checked the codes on the sticker in the tyrewell but I didn't see anything obvious which said it has an aux heater.

Edit: My sig is supposed to say I have a 2006 170 (BMR) TDi but it's blank!

Cheers

[patomlin76]

Think it's an optional extra but others here will let you know what code to look out for, i'm sure...

[Crasher]

I am coming across a few cars with the additional air pre heater which is a unit installed in the heater box running off of battery power. They also seem to go wrong a lot and cost about £500 to replace.

[andrewturner]

I am coming across a few cars with the additional air pre heater which is a unit installed in the heater box running off of battery power. They also seem to go wrong a lot and cost about £500 to replace.

£500, wow! Presumably you're talking about something buried in the depths of the dash where most of that money goes on the labour charges owing to the time it takes to replace?

[Crasher]

The one I looked into last week was on a Golf 5 TDI. During the service scan a fault came up saying that the auxiliary air heater was faulty. Initially I thought it must have the Webasto auxiliary heater PR9M1/9M9 but a quick check of the PR sheets showed it had the PR7E6 electric auxiliary air heater. This was a pre 2007 car so the heater element was £300 and a bit of a sketch to change, the post 2007 heater element is only £134.