[Vwdiesel] air filter housing (need hillbilly engineering)

[Mark LaPlante]

Folks,

It turns out the plastic that holds in the clips on the bottom of my air 
filter housing is broken. The plastic seemed very brittle, and I think I 
broke one side removing the filter and the other side trying to get the 
spring clip reattached. My local independent VW shop told me it is a 
dealer only item and my dealer is worse than useless. (They claim they 
can only get body parts for my car; they're apparently clueless that 
many parts are shared among other VW models and years.). I don't happen 
to remember off the top of my head the newest VW 1.6 NA that would have 
had the same air filter housing.

I found a few promising listings on car-part.com, but I think it is 
quite a risk ordering a used part given that it may also have weak or 
broken plastic holding the clips in.

I would rather try to find a way to make the housing I have stay on, 
perhaps via a little hillbilly engineering.  The best that I've come up 
with would be to weld some springy metal to the bottom of the intake 
manifold bent up at 90 degrees with a gap just big enough to wedge the 
plastic housing into, and then secure the top of the air filter with 
clips as normal. I don't weld, but it turns out that I live two blocks 
from an auto care shop that also does a lot of metal work 
<http://www.streetrodgarage.com/index.asp?PageAction=Custom&ID=30>

Maybe that's overkill. I'd thought about binder clips but I figured the 
vibration would make them fall off eventually.

Any ideas? Or anyone have a spare housing? I used to know a web site for 
searching VW dealer part inventory across the country, but I can't find 
it at the moment. The part number is 068 129 613 A (my local dealer says 
that's a "bad part number").

Are all car brands as bad about parts availability for cars greather 
than 10-15 years old?

Mark