Some bits of my tinware aren't very well fixed and I want to check it all over. Does anyone have a diagram showing the parts and their respective locations? Also, I've seen cooling flaps mentioned and can see some slots for a bar that fits across the engine behind the main fan shroud. What do these do if fitted and do I need them?
The tin locations are shown in the Bentley manual. The flaps, I believe work as non return valves so that the hot air stays in the heat exchanger area when the engine is stopped.
The bottom flaps in the fan housing are non return, the top flaps are to control the amount and direction of air flowing over your cylinder heads/oil cooler.
Here are some shots from Haynes (same images as Bentley) The flaps go under the covers at bottom. Here are the flaps in relation to the housing The flaps are there to control air flow during warm up, so that the engine warms up as quickly as possible, and also to control air flow over the oil cooler. Warming up as quickly as possible helps your engine avoid unnecessary wear and last longer. They were removed by thick heads who thought they new better than VW engineers and are replaced by well informed owners.
Its used for almost all of it. You can get replacement thermostats from heritage but the other few nits I needed I got from ebay, on here or the likes of VW Heaven, Megabug, Parts Emporium etc.
Yes wrong flaps, he was talking about the top ones, didn't read the question properly, always getting my flaps mixed up....
I'm guessing no bottom flaps either as the small plates that secure the back end of the heat exchanger are missing too.
