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TIII, Last week I stumbled upon a pretty wierd piece of T3 Volkswagen equipment for cold weather areas. Perhaps someone else has seen one of these on a Type I or II somewhere. I hadn't. I have recently completed a rather large inventory (over 1,500 individual parts) of NOS parts at my local aircooled garage (VW-auhtipiste Inc.) here in Turku, Finland. It only took the better part of six months to do ... Well, resting behind a stack of 6 dust covered, but primered, pristine and unused NOS Type III doors, was this odd looking piece of grey-primered square sheet metal. I found the Volkswagen part number "311 062 231 A" on it and did some checking. This turned out to be a part of some M code package for cold weather areas (I will check and see if I can find the exact M code for this). The plate is pretty solid and mounts directly underneath the engine. There is a provision (or hole if you will) for draining the oil as well as a removable piece in case you have an oil sump heater and panzer cable. I have one of these sump heaters and swear by it in the winter. I can explain more about these to any Southern Californians who might not even know these exist ... (haha) if anyone is interested. This plate or pan, covers the entire underside of the engine from heat exchanger to heat exchanger (width wise) and is slightly longer than the actual size of the engine. Apparently, you mount this up tight to the engine, and it helps to maintain engine heat during severely cold weather (like we have in Finland for about seven months of the year). Further, it also protects the heat exchangers from moisture (melted snow and ice) and or road debris (sand and salt) which might begin the horrid process of rust-cancer death to your expensive heat exchangers. As I understand, it works best or for the benefit of the engine, if you are driving at speed or on the highway. It can however, be a "bad thing" if used for continual city driving, as it will cause overheating. This was the general opinion of everyone at the shop. I may go ahead and apply some anti-rust paint and undercoating to it and see what happens during our coming winter. Although the temperature is 24C today, it won't be long before I am installing my studded snow tires and driving around with four pairs of long underwear on. Happy Labor Day weekend (to the Yanks). -- Patrick 1963 Beetle 1967 Variant _____________________________________ S T E E L ? we have no butter, but I ask you - would you rather have BUTTER or GUNS ... ... shall we import LARD or STEEL? let me tell you - Preparedness makes us powerful, Butter merely makes us fat. L A R D ? _____________________________________ Patrick Joel Morton Rauhankatu 28 as 27 FIN -- 20100 TURKU F I N L A N D E-mail: patmor@utu.fi GSM: +358 40 502 2654 Home: +358 2 469 8535