VWR air-intake filter conversion

In general, Volkswagen Racing air-intake is a little bit expensive but good solution for the high power output VW 2.0 TFSI engine.

But in my opinion it has some drawbacks. The biggest of them - is the foam rubber air filter itself that is made by ITG. Its cleaning process is very inconvenient comparing with other types of filters that made from cotton gauze (for example from K&N manufacturer).
Also, the cleaning kit for the foam air filter from ITG is more expensive than those that are cotton.
Actually, you may clean the foam filter with gasoline (allowed by manufacturer), but it stinks pretty much.☺

Moreover, if you"ll need to replace the filter with the new one - you will need to buy not only the air filter itself, but also the base of the air filter box. That is because the filter is glued directly to the base of the filter box, when manufactured and it is no way to buy it separately. Of course, this is increases (doubles) replacement cost.

So I decided to get rid from this foam filter and convert VWR air-intake system to use the cotton gauze air-filter.

How it was done?
First of all, I took the air filter box dimensions and started to search for the suitable universal air filter from well-known manufacturers.
Also, I wanted the filter with the maximum possible working surface area. Many cotton air filters has the muffled front side. I don't wanted to use them.

Finally I ordered the cotton gauze air filter from BMC.

BMC FBTW76-140P twin air filter

After the filter was received, the question that arose was: how exactly to perform the conversion?

First thing is to remove the foam ITG filter. This is how it looks after removal:

Foam ITG filter inside the VWR box

The filter was simply glued to its aluminum base.
After advice from the professional welder who helped me a lot with the conversion process, the decision was to build the 3" aluminum adapter pipe, that will connect the new cotton gauze filter to the air filter base.

That is how the adapter looks, welded to the filter base:

3" adapter for VWR air-intake

Then, everything else is pretty simple:
1. Mounting the filter on the adapter, cutting out about 2 cm. of the filters mount length, ensuring that the filter has at least 0.5 cm. free space from the box front.
2. Closing the air-filter box exactly as it was before.
3. Mounting the air-filter box back on car.

Finito. ☺
No visual changes from the outside, but my VWR air-intake now uses the universal cotton gauze filter, that may be easily cleaned using the cleaning kit from any cotton air-filters manufacturer (such as K&N or BMC).


Odometer: 57,000 km.