How bad are these gappy tins and what priority...

[phillything]

Thing experts - I've been cruising around the neighborhood a bit and really enjoying my '74 thing. I was told that my "tins" around the engine compartment are horribly aligned and I should replace them. Now that I'm thinking about what's next - I WAS thinking about replacing the turn signal to get it actually working properly again, and fixing the horn, and other things of that nature.

How bad is it to have tins with big gaps in them like this? I'm under the impression that it's bad because somehow it makes the engine suck in hotter air?

also, I have no heater boxes or heater at all and am fine with that, but what do these other seemingly corrugated cardboard tubes do? Should I be blocking any of them off?

[77kafer]

Happy to see that you don't have a fuel filter sitting right on top of the distributor.
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Supposed to be 77käfer, but there are no umlauts on an american keyboard

Overheard on 27 June 07, one lady to another when they saw my Harli in a parking lot at West Point, "maybe he found it on the clearance aisle at the Volkswagen dealer"

[rhubarbray]

The curvature of the tin seems correct, and I can see the rubber trim is there, so why does it look to me that the whole engine is sitting too far forward?
I had the engine out last winter to do a lot of little jobs, replaced the rubber seal, and my '74 engine seems to sit further back

[heimlich]

I would have guessed a missing seal but I see it. Next guess would be that the wrong tin was used if that is possible.

Can you measure the width of your tin and compare it with someone else's?
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[KAmes]

If you have no heater boxes you should block off the two hoses connected to the fan shroud. They sell these plugs for the purpose, https://www2.cip1.com/acc-c10-5439/ or people use rubber plugs or bottoms off of cans, anything. Of course then you have the round holes in the lower tin to cover with something also. Regarding the tin gaps condition of transmission mounts affects things but like said that looks too far forward. Seems like I read once that beetle transmissions sit different than thing or bus transmissions, maybe it has been changed? I don't really know about that, never did it, but maybe someone else does.

[Hobug]

I'm running a beetle transaxle and it aligns the same as the original Thing trans did. I'm also using a type 4 engine seal that works well to keep everything nice and tight.
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73 Thing (Typ481)
76 Westy
69 Squareback auto
74 Bug
63 Bug
63 Ragtop
72 Vert

[phillything]

Thank you all! Yes, my fuel filter is outside of the engine area.. over sort of near the back right wheel well. I just found a link to a bracket to mount it, so will tackle that sometime too.

KAmes - just to be clear, I ordered those plugs and it's these tubes in GREEN that I should plug right? See attached

In regards to the tins, I really have no idea... the car is a bit crooked all-around (probably was in an accident sometime maybe?)... Measuring across is sort of impossible without removing, but I will sometime.

[Schepp]

I'd remove the tubes from the shroud and block off the holes in the shroud. The fan's air flow needs to go over the cylinders as much as possible. Not out the holes and tubes to nowhere.
Plumbers expandable plugs work great too.

If I were to guess the body is tweaked and that's why the engine looks pushed forward.

Regardless.
The goal is to keep the hot air blowing over the cylinders, exiting down and out the back of the vehicle. Sealed out from the engine compartment.

When you're stopped all that hot air rises back into the engine bay through the gaps and is sucked back into the fan. Its essentially trying to cool the engine with hot air.

As long as big holes are blocked off or covered and all of your engine tin is fitted.
A sealed engine bay will help your engine run cooler.

If you can find some rubber sheet material and figure out a way to fill the gaps. That would probably be sufficient.

[KAmes]