heater takes a while

aquaranti said:

even though the temp gauge is in good territory the heat still takes a while to come out hot, controls are set to hot all the way in the red area . when I rev engine it seems to get hotter out of the vents but when at idle it cools down. I checked the anti freeze in the bottle and it is at the right mark, however when I opened the radiator cap I noticed that the level was down, could I need anti freeze in the radiator? my armada is a 2004 le with 20000 miles on it.

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The radiator level should be checked from the "hot" and "cold" levels in the run off tank. You looked in the right place to begin with. For such a large truck mine seems to heat just as well as any other car or truck I have owned. There are several components to the heating system and heater core. There are also several thermostats and one could be malfunctioning not allowing hot coolant to flow through the core where the blower is located. If it seems like it is not heating like it use to you should have it looked at.

If your motor is heating up normally (2 or 3 minutes of driving), it's not your thermostat.
My temp gauge can barely be off cold, and the heater pumps out hot air.

rp718 said:

If your motor is heating up normally (2 or 3 minutes of driving), it's not your thermostat.
My temp gauge can barely be off cold, and the heater pumps out hot air.

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thanks for the replies, after further investigation I noticed that the level in the bottle was low so I added coolant,I believe the culprit was a hose connector, it seemed that the connection at the water bottle was not properly clamped, the hose was not all the way in and the clamp was,nt clamped correctly over the hose and connector just over the hose. probably causing coolant to leak out inder pressure.