Re: Type 44 Fresh air flap repair experiences?

[Kneale Brownson <knotnook@traverse.com>]

In my "new" '91 200, Peter, I can see the flap opening in the firewall by
looking up through a grille behind the glove box (back of head in passenger
footwell).  Unfortunately, I also can see the door's open and the spring's
hanging.  Both my '86 and '87 5k's had the spring in place, but the '86
parts car had a broken vacuum switch inside the evaporator box.  I had to
remove most of the lower dash trim pieces to get to the screws anchoring
the evaporator boxes in both cars (the screws are located outside the four
corners of the recirculation door opening), so I imagine I'm going to have
to do the same to fix the '91's door.  

What I don't know yet is whether the spring breaks the plastic piece
anchoring it to the recirculation door or whether it breaks the plastic
brace inside the evaporator box.  The former will be easy to fix because I
have two doors with good plastic parts.  The latter will mean fabricating
some sort of anchor because I don't want to wait a couple weeks to get the
factory fix.  I'd have thought that if Audi came up with a piece of metal
to anchor the spring because the plastic broke on the '80's cars, they'd
have installed that part in the '91.

Kneale Brownson

At 06:43 PM 11/17/99 -0500, Peter Schulz wrote:
>Folks:
>
>Perused the archives late last night to find out how to repair the
>fresh air flap under behind/the glovebox.
>
>The wagon definitely shows signs of a malfunctioning flap
>(windows fog up quickly for no apparent reason, I hear a pressurized
>air sound (possibly the hose cam off the vacuum actuator)).
>
>Does anyone have either pictures of the flap and how to access
>it, or detaile dinstructions?  My archive search, using "air flap"
>turned up alot of references, but no real instructions.  I also
>looked at Scott Mockry's site, which also ahowed a drawing of
>the flap, but no detailed instructions.
>
>(By detail, I mean the type of detail that is generally used
>when describing how to replace the timing belt, bomb, etc.)
>
>Do I have to remove the glovebox? I took a look around the passenger
>footwell, and could not see any obvious access point.
>
>And yes, I will write up an FAQ on this when I finish the repair.
>
>TIA!
>
>-Peter Schulz
>1991 TQW with foggy windows.
>1990 CQ - may also have similar problems..
>Chelmsford, MA USA
>
>schulz@res.ray.com