2001 Altima Overheating/No heat

[drenzio]

I'm the original owner of a 2001 Nissan Altima with 85K miles. I've taken the car to 2 mechanics spent about $1K so far and now I'm reaching out to this forum for someone who had this same issue. The short story is that the car overheats and has little or heat that fades after a minute for the past 2 winters, no white smoke, no combustion gas in the coolant, heater core is clean and has good flow. She has a P1126 error code and the thermostat was replaced 3 times, 1 was a Nissan OEM stat; none of those solved the problem. The last mechanic drilled a small hole in stat and the car runs perfect, NO overheating, but I still have no heat. I've been driving the car like this for 2 years and put another 10K miles on it in this condition. Sounds like a head gasket, but there are no other signs of it being that. Winter is coming...need heat/defrost.

[VStar650CL]

Sounds like it's the head circulation, but not the gasket. Has anyone checked the pipes under the manifold for blockages? Flow to both the heater and Throttle Body comes out the back of the head. If that's obstructed where it exits the head, you'll get the sort of symptoms you describe.