2012 Heater Broken

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NeilBlanchard

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 11, 2014
Messages
619
My sister-in-law's 2012 has a broken heater - the fan works but no heat. The fuses were checked, but appear to be okay. Has anybody had this happen? Any guesses as to what the fix is?

Edit: I was corrected - her Leaf is a 2012.
 
Mine had a similar problem and it turned out to be a bad hot water temperature sensor. It was sending a value of 300 degrees (or something above setpoint) so it never allowed the heater to turn on.
 
This was somewhat common on the '11 LEAFs especially, but seemed to be some sort of infant failure as the issue started coming up less.

The most common failure was the heating element itself. Fixed under warranty. Parts can take a while to come in.
 
It is being covered under warranty. Apparently, it requires two parts and they (would) cost ~$2,000. :shock: The parts arrive next Tuesday, so not too slow.

So, the design of the heater in the '15 Leaf S is different than in the '11?
 
NeilBlanchard said:
It is being covered under warranty.
Did you have an extended warranty? If my heater broke on my 2011 and it was $2,000 to fix, being that I almost never use it, wouldn't fix... Still, YIKES!

And yes, the 2015 has the heater augmented with a heat pump, so it works more efficiently to heat. That said, the compressor for cooling is said the be slightly more efficient on the 2011. Others surely have better details....
 
I was corrected today - my sister-in-law's Leaf is a 2012 model.

I think you meant a '15 Leaf S has a resistance heater? Do we know if the new resistance heater is substantially the same, or greatly improved in reliability than the early models?
 
Okay, they took a lot longer to get the two parts required to fix the heater - and one of the replacement parts was faulty. Go figure - so they have to wait some more for that part to be delivered.

I hope this repair lasts the life of the rest of the car!
 
Sounds familiar. I guess they still do not know how to properly troubleshoot these cars. It took over a month for them to find and repair mine and it was just a simple sensor that went out.

http://www.mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?p=348334#p348334" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You can follow my posts in the last three pages of the above thread.
 
To be clear, there are two distinct problems here. One affected 2011/2012 LEAFs and one affected 2013s for the first half (or so) of the model year. You'll find the threads if you search on this forum.

The 2013 problem was a much more common problem and by some time in summer they replaced the bad components in the manufacturing process. As far as I know, on the 2011 and 2012s a few of the cars suddenly saw this failure and it's probably waiting to happen to all the others "some day". On the 2011 I own I'm seriously considering pushing hard for a pro-active replacement before the warranty expires - and when they (likely) turn that down I'll probably go in for the extended warranty just for this part.
 
cgaydos said:
You'll find the threads if you search on this forum.
Good luck with the search. success with searches is hit and miss. Sometimes I can find what I'm looking for and other times no results and then someone points out where they are. I'm not sure what the issues is other than it is a known problem with this site. The internal search function is really bad, but the google search is better.
 
cgaydos said:
The 2013 problem was a much more common problem and by some time in summer they replaced the bad components in the manufacturing process. As far as I know, on the 2011 and 2012s a few of the cars suddenly saw this failure and it's probably waiting to happen to all the others "some day". On the 2011 I own I'm seriously considering pushing hard for a pro-active replacement before the warranty expires - and when they (likely) turn that down I'll probably go in for the extended warranty just for this part.

Why you think the 2011/2012 problem is "an accident waiting to happen"? My understanding is that it was sort of an "infant mortality" problem: either the bad (batch?) of parts failed quickly (as in the first year) or there wasn't a problem. Luckily, I appear to be the latter (already verified working heat this winter) although I purchased an extended warranty when I bought my Leaf.
 
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