....on the 4 or 5 doghouse engines i’ve pulled apart in my short time, i can not once remember a bracket... at least, i cant ever remember having to remove any sort of bolt from there...
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The bracket, which fastens to the two upper bolts securing the oil cooler to the adaptor, is missing on about half the engines I see. Ditto for the stamped steel air-dams under the cylinder heads. And on most of the engines I see, the usual complaint is overheating.
You don’t have to remove the fastener to remove the blower housing, just loosen it. The fastener is usually a Filster head machine screw, as for the other tin-ware. (I like to use bolts instead of screws.) It should have the large diameter washer plus a warpy washer. It fits in the notch just beside where the air-vane return spring is fastened.
Normally, the screw and washer are loosely installed in the bracket, mating with the blower-housing when the assembly is lowered over the oil cooler. Without the bracket & fastener, at high rpms the tin flap over the blower housing bulges out and most of the air escapes around the oil cooler instead of blowing through it. There’s a little foam gasket on the oil cooler that’s supposed to seal this leakage path but it’s easily defeated when the flap is not secured. (Hint: Use a full-width foam seal. And the proper fastener.)
Form follows function. The bracket is evidence of the critical attention to detail paid by Volkswagen to ensure maximum air-flow thru the cooler’s core. Failure to include the bracket in their article or to stress the need for the wider fan, is just another of those ‘little details’ the magazines don’t bother with. Unfortunately, attention to detail is the major difference between a good engine and a piece of crap.
-Bob Hoover
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