Design Flaw?

Drove my '97 Passat in a driving rain on the freeway for an hour on Sunday. Haven't driven the car since then. Today I open up the air filter box for an unrelated reason and I find water in there with a saturated air filter. All plumbing looks original and stock to me. Hard to understand how this could slip past the Germans. Shoot, it never STOPS raining in Germany!

There's 4 clips between the top housing and the bottom, if the clips in the back ( inside the fender area ) aren't clipped properly or missing then this happens. It's not easy to get the cover on and the clips properly secured but that's just how it is. This is human error first and maybe a design flaw if you want all service to be easy

I had this happen to me as well, on a somewhat dirty filter, on a 5 hour trip back home. car started to lose power, and a tromp on the throttle would clear it somewhat. When I got to the wair filter, it had crumpled up and into the A/F housing, a result of the water saturating the fitler and causing the vacuum from the engine to suck the filter media up to the roof of the filter cover.

In my case however, I had the airbox out a few days before, and had not replaced the snorkel on the front of the airbox- the one that draw air from behind the passenger side headlight, rather than next to the rad.

I have since been in some more dirving rain, and have not experienced the same filter clogging.

The attaching clips and hardware all seemed good and tight- it's true- they are a little hard to get to, but not impossibly so if you take your time. Snorkels were on there too. I have one that sources air from behind the headlight, and another one that stretches back towards the firewall. This second one has a spring loaded flap on it. I guess I'll dry the filter out and see how it looks. It's pretty new so I don't want to replace it unless I need to....

Going a tiny bit off topic here: I believe the same thing happened to our 2001 Golf (MkIV)... My wife drove through a torrential downpour last year, concluding with a turn into a flooded street... We at first thought that the engine hydrolocked because of the water getting into the boost hoses from the flooded street, but when I opened up the air filter box months later, the filter was still soaked (and mouldy...)

Yuri

YBlocker-
Is your belly pan in place? Many of the older vehicles are missing these and part of the purpose for that component is to minimize water ingress into the engine compartment.

Right- the belly pan is long gone...good point.

tditom said:

YBlocker-
Is your belly pan in place? Many of the older vehicles are missing these and part of the purpose for that component is to minimize water ingress into the engine compartment.

Click to expand...

Not relevant for this problem. The intake snorkle is behind the front pass headlight assembly, and has its own intake area that is comprised of several small snap-on pieces. The belly pan being removed would not matter in this case.

I have had the same thing happen, but I am using a VR-6 snorkle, which has twice the area of the stock B4. It has not been a problem causing a lack of power and I have only found it wet when driving in a tirrential downpour at highway speeds, which is not that often.

Yeah OK. Just seems that for a car designed from a country where driving in torrential rain on the Autobahn is as common as beer & schnitzel, they would have figured out a way.....

I couldn't agree more!