[Vwdiesel] air filter housing (need hillbilly engineering)

[Chuck Carnohan]

Mark,  Older cars and SCROUNGING are required.  Hillbilly Engineering is
also mandatory.  Go to the wrecking yards and remember to get a passle
of parts, not just what you need.  It will cost you about the same $$$
and then you have some spares laying about.  One new part at a time is
for consumable parts only- seals, gaskets, filters and the like.  Even
on new parts you get a better deal if you buy a bunch as
http://www.autohausaz.com/volkswagen-auto-parts/index.html and
http://www.stopshopanddrive.com/ give you free shipping with a $50
purchase.  You will get the hang of it with a little practice and this
forum! 

Chuck Carnohan

-----Original Message-----
From: vwdiesel-bounces at vwfans.com [mailto:vwdiesel-bounces at vwfans.com]
On Behalf Of Mark LaPlante
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 12:18 PM
To: vwdiesel at vwfans.com
Subject: [Vwdiesel] air filter housing (need hillbilly engineering)

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

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