Hi All,
Changed the air filter today and had the joy most would have predicted of wrestling to get the bolts apart. They were rusted together solid and the captive nuts obviously just spun in the plastic... penetrating oil and strategic spanner placements made no difference. In the end I did what I think most do... and snapped them off.
This led to the question of how to re-secure. Clearly a job for a cable tie... but after f'ing around for a few minutes to realise passing them around or over the air box was going to be about as impossible as removing those original bolts... I realised a better solution was required.
I ended up drilling some small holes above the original lug points in both the main box and the cover. I then passed some cable ties through before clipping the cover back over and tightening the ties. It's super solid and neat. When it's next changed I can just cut the ties and replace in a fraction of the time I would spend doing battle with bolts.
Anyway... not the most thrilling of updates... but I thought it might be a useful tip for someone at some stage who was sat there wondering how to reattach the air box cover in a nice fashion.
Some pics... here you can see new filter and ties in their ready position:
Next they were looped through the cover:
Tightened trimmed and cleaned to finish very simple but IMO a nice solution to a cr4p design:
I also cleaned out the wheel arches and suspension arms whilst I was down there:
Finally... the state of the old filter kinda shows that people don't bother changing these because it's a faf... this filter was A pretty dirty and B rather beat up so whoever fitted it must have done so with a hammer. I would estimate it hasn't been changed for quite some time which means it was a main dealer who did this and several established independents obviously haven't bothered since! Naughty! Knowing the details on this is one reason I want to try and tackle most things myself on this car so anyway that's another tick.
Cheers all,
Chris
Changed the air filter today and had the joy most would have predicted of wrestling to get the bolts apart. They were rusted together solid and the captive nuts obviously just spun in the plastic... penetrating oil and strategic spanner placements made no difference. In the end I did what I think most do... and snapped them off.
This led to the question of how to re-secure. Clearly a job for a cable tie... but after f'ing around for a few minutes to realise passing them around or over the air box was going to be about as impossible as removing those original bolts... I realised a better solution was required.
I ended up drilling some small holes above the original lug points in both the main box and the cover. I then passed some cable ties through before clipping the cover back over and tightening the ties. It's super solid and neat. When it's next changed I can just cut the ties and replace in a fraction of the time I would spend doing battle with bolts.
Anyway... not the most thrilling of updates... but I thought it might be a useful tip for someone at some stage who was sat there wondering how to reattach the air box cover in a nice fashion.
Some pics... here you can see new filter and ties in their ready position:
Next they were looped through the cover:
Tightened trimmed and cleaned to finish very simple but IMO a nice solution to a cr4p design:
I also cleaned out the wheel arches and suspension arms whilst I was down there:
Finally... the state of the old filter kinda shows that people don't bother changing these because it's a faf... this filter was A pretty dirty and B rather beat up so whoever fitted it must have done so with a hammer. I would estimate it hasn't been changed for quite some time which means it was a main dealer who did this and several established independents obviously haven't bothered since! Naughty! Knowing the details on this is one reason I want to try and tackle most things myself on this car so anyway that's another tick.
Cheers all,
Chris
