2002 Neon not getting up to temp and no heat…

I have an 02 Neon that has been sitting for a while (a year or more) I threw a battery in it and started up and runs and drives perfect. My daughter used this car while she was in high school and my son is now about to start driving it. I took it and got it inspected and it passed and got the tags. I have been driving it around town instead of taking my van just to “work the bugs out.”

While driving it the other night it started getting cold so flipped heat on and noticed there was no heat, it blows luke warm. I happened to look at the temp gauge and noticed it gets a little above quarter instead of half way on the gauge which is where I figure it should be. So I bought a new thermostat from Advance and still nothing. So I got a different thermostat from O’Reilly’s to rule out a bad new thermostat. I have have checked all antifreeze and added it as needed and ran it with the cap off and squeezed the upper hose to try to get any air out of the system. I still have no heat. I have been under the car while running and turned off and see no signs of coolant leaks anywhere.

I have a laser temp gauge and let it idle in the driveway for about 20 minutes and measured the temp on the thermostat housing and it was around 130. I measured the temp on the heater hoses going in and out of the heater core and both are about 130 as well. The upper radiator hose topped out at about 90 degrees. While standing there I noticed the fans kicked on. I turned the heat on high with the fan all the way on and the heat coming out of the vents was only 72 degrees.

Now personally I haven’t driven this car in a while other than the last week so I am not 100% the heat was functioning before or not. I have ran through everything I can think of and short of flushing the radiator or replacing it. I am not fully ruling out the heater core being stopped up, but if it were the heater core I wouldn’t think that would keep the car from getting up to temperature.