That must be why they call it a "baffle".

-- Gnarlie

On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 12:27 PM, David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net> wrote:

> At 02:01 PM 5/7/2014, Cunegonde wrote:
>
>> This part doesn't appear in Bentley, unless it's a non-pictured part
>> of the heat exchanger itself.
>>
>> Inside the heater box, sandwiched between the core and the blower
>> manifold openings, is a piece of sheet metal that doesn't quite
>> cover the whole face of the core . It has one row of small holes
>> along one long side, and three rows of holes along the other long
>> side. It obviously blocks large debris, but also restricts airflow
>> to about 50% of the core.
>>
>> What is it, and can I leave it out for greater heat exchange efficiency?
>>
>
> p/n 251 265 329.  VW call it a baffle plate.
>
> When I see odd stuff like that I tend to suspect that it was
> introduced after the initial design to solve a problem that showed up
> in testing.  If I had to guess, I'd guess that they weren't getting
> enough temperature rise in the air going through the core, so they
> slowed it down some.
>
> Yours,
> David
>