Just bought my daughter a Versa last week. She tells me when she first starts the car the low coolant temp. light comes on and stays on for the first couple of miles. I checked the Owners Manual, and it says this might happen, as long as the light goes out after the car warms up everything is OK. Is this a normal occurance? Does this happen on all Versas in cold weather? It has not been really cold outside. Just wondering if this is happening to anyone else.

We've had our car for two weeks and it does the same thing that you described. Since it was described in the owner's manual, I haven't given it much thought.

Yes, just take it easy until the light goes out, especially if you have a CVT. (I usually try to keep mine at or under 2000rpm when the light's on, but that's just personal preference.) The light comes on even in warmer weather, but just goes out quicker.

Its normal....warm up your versa!!Wait till the blue light goes out...then drive!

It's not necessary to wait for your light to go out before you drive. You SHOULD let the car idle for a minute before you go, so the oil pump has a chance to start circulating oil... and drive the car gently until the light goes out.

Here in Panama it almost never drops below 72 at night and generally it is up to 80 when I start the Tiida. Yet, the coolant light stays on for about a minute and a half.

There's no engine temperature gauge in this car. It's blue when the car first starts off, and goes away when it's in the prefered operating temperature range. It'll will turn red if you overheat the engine. It's what we get instead of the full temperature gauge.

I prefer the temp gauge so you can tell when the engine is warming up when starting it on a really cold morning and you would be able to see it start to over heat. I don't know how high above normal it has to get to warn you but I hope it's early.

This is true, it is basically the temperature gauge slimmed down into two lights. If you think about it, the blue light goes out when the car begins to warm up to normal operating temperature; the light goes out around where the needle would hit the 1/4 mark. It is more than likely that the guys who designed this system enabled the red light to illuminate at a temperature that is significantly higher than normal operating temperature, which would most likely be the 3/4 mark at most. This would give you ample time to pull your car over without even getting close to seizing or damaging your engine.

Depends on where the engineers set the trigger point and how temperature sensitive the engine is.

My RX-7 had a similar setup.... it was an "analog" gauge, but realistically had three positions... "cold", "normal", and "needs new engine". (it wasn't a very heat tolerant engine).

Beware, though... if your blue light comes on AFTER the car has warmed up and you've been driving around, you have something serious wrong with the car, likely a burst/blocked hose or a BIG air bubble.

Ever Victorious wrote:
Beware, though... if your blue light comes on AFTER the car has warmed up and you've been driving around, you have something serious wrong with the car, likely a burst/blocked hose or a BIG air bubble.

THe blue light would only come back on when driving if the thermostat was stuck open, meaning the engine is too cold. There is a seperate red light indicating the engine is overheating. Although if the temperature light is located on the radiator, a major hose failure could result in a low temp condition, but the huge amounts of steam, and trail of water behind you would be a good sign.

fasmas wrote:Just bought my daughter a Versa last week. She tells me when she first starts the car the low coolant temp. light comes on and stays on for the first couple of miles. I checked the Owners Manual, and it says this might happen, as long as the light goes out after the car warms up everything is OK. Is this a normal occurance? Does this happen on all Versas in cold weather? It has not been really cold outside. Just wondering if this is happening to anyone else.

It happened to mine also when the weather got cold here.

I doubt that you have to drive the V any more gently than any other car when the engine is cold. After about a min of warmup (in normal weather) you should be able to drive the car normally. I just wouldn't be gunning the engine when it's cold. As you said EV, you certainly don't have to wait til the light goes out before u drive it.

motoguy128 wrote:
THe blue light would only come back on when driving if the thermostat was stuck open, meaning the engine is too cold. There is a seperate red light indicating the engine is overheating. Although if the temperature light is located on the radiator, a major hose failure could result in a low temp condition, but the huge amounts of steam, and trail of water behind you would be a good sign.

Actually, either of the conditions I described can cause an under temperature reading. In fact, they both happened to the same car of mine... one of my '87.5 Subaru XT's.

I was driving to work, looked down because my heater was going cold, and noticed the temp gauge almost completely flatlined. Looking out the front, there was no indication of what was happening, and by the time I noticed it, almost all the coolant had leaked/vaporized, so there was very little (white) smoke coming out the rear. Pulled over and found that my coolant return hose from the heater core had split, and I lost all the coolant.

After replacing the line and refilling the coolant, I went through some fun "burping" the system over the next couple weeks, including getting a huge air bubble stuck at my t-stat, causing another near-flatline of my temperature gauge.

Incredibly, I didn't warp the heads or blow a HG in either case. I wouldn't reccommend that with any newer engine, as everything made since the mid-90's seems to be hyper sensitive to overheating.