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Today I was looking for one of the air intake elbows for a FI engine. I was surprised that I had trouble finding a good one and realized that while these have always lasted forever for me, I often find that they have been abused by mistake on cars that come to me late in their lives. The mistake that people seem to make is to think that since there are clamps on those elbows they should be tightened really tight. Instead of that, here's what I recommend: Loosen both clamps and slip everything together, then carefully take the air cleaner off the engine without moving the elbow with respect to the air cleaner. Turn the clamp on the air cleaner end so the "buckle" is on the bottom, out of the way, and then tighten it to keep it from moving in the future. Then tighten the other end just barely enough to make it a slip fit on the intake air distributor. If you do this right, you can slip the air cleaner in and out without touching either of the clamps and without leaving any stress on the elbow. ************ I took a good look at an old muffler I recently replaced. I was surprised to notice that it had been carefully made so that the 2 inlets that came from the 2 rear cylinders have long tubes that extend maybe 2 feet into the muffler. This looks like it makes the total tube length for each of the 4 cylinders approximately equal. Looking at some of the other old mufflers I have here, it appears that not all manufacturers did this. To tell the difference, you just have to reach or look in either of the inlets that have the threaded connectors on them. The tubes on the best mufflers just go in and disappear around a bend. Those tubes turn and run 2/3 of the way toward the other end of the muffler. - ******************************* Jim Adney, jadney@vwtype3.org Madison, Wisconsin, USA ******************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------- List info at http://www.vwtype3.org/list or mailto:help@vwtype3.org