328 Heating/Vent Front Filter for Cars Up To 76076

There has been a fair amount of discussion about changing the filters that sit inside the actual left and right heater boxes (underneath the cover in spare tire area).

There has also been some discussion of cleaning the filters in the NEW style heater fan motor for the 328, which appeared approximately halfway through the 1988 328 run (starting at car 76076, or 76085 for the Turbo). These updated motors have the filters adjacent to the actual motors, inside one master assembly from what I can tell, and replacing them is easy and has been described in the archives.

As one of the last 87's, my 328 has the original style heater fan motors, that is, two independent motor assemblies in the lower left front of the car, just ahead of the driver's front tire.

These original style motors do not have filters inside the fan motor assembly. Rather, there is one large filter in between wire mesh that sits just ahead of the fans, and is anchored to the front of the car just above the black lower lip ("mini front spoiler lip" some would say). This is part #61945900, details can be found in the last page of the Technical Service Bulletin list for the car (Service Bulletin 96-3). Theoretically air that comes in through the vents (e.g., heat or defrost or just fresh air in summertime) passes through this filter.

Anyways, I decided to freshen up the heating/vent filters on the car and figured I had to do this one to be thorough. This thing was NASTY DIRTY! It was quite clear to me that it had not been cleaned since original (almost 20 years ago).

Removal was easy enough, just remove the two 1ft x 1ft panels (in front of the driver's tire, and then the flat one parallel to the ground in the far lower left), then two 8mm hex lock nuts and you can wiggle the filter mesh out.

Now it's on to find some filter material. I have this: http://www.webproducts.com/products/furnace_ac/absorber.jsp

...but not sure if it's heavy duty enough for the outdoor air at 100+ (km/h, of course) of air flow.

Anybody ever ventured to replace the filter pad in this thing before?


--Mike
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You can see the filter in this picture.
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All clean! Pretty easy job. Reinstallation was a 10 minute affair.

I'm not entirely sure how effective the filter is in the first place, since the compartment there is not exactly air tight, but you can't fault me for being thorough!

New filter:
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Yep, I used the WEB "absorber." Not sure if it's ideal but it's better than what was in there.

I used the old filter as a template and cut the new filter from it. No adhesive, just manually worked the new filter in, a flat-bladed screwdriver helped here to get things in position. Since the mesh looked like it had been "melted" together or something in a few places as glue, I just sealed it with a few staples from a staple gun (manually bending in the prongs through the mesh holes).


--Mike