The air conditioning filter was severely damaged

A Volkswagen Sagitar was brought in for maintenance and inspection. The car was manufactured in August 2018 and had traveled only over 40,000 kilometers in more than seven years. The owner mentioned that he rarely drives this car, covering just 5,000 to 6,000 kilometers annually, and typically gets it serviced once every December.

During the whole car inspection, the master encountered a rare situation where the air conditioning filter of the car was severely damaged.

Taking the opportunity of maintenance, let's take a look at the condition of this Sagitar. As shown in the figure below, the air filter assembly on the upper part of the engine has been removed. The engine is a 1.4T type with a low failure rate, and the matching gearbox is a 7-speed dry dual clutch type, which has not encountered any problems.

Raise the car to look at the chassis, as shown in the following picture. There is a large plastic protective plate at the bottom of the engine and gearbox, and there are two holes in the gearbox position. The technician said it is for cooling the gearbox.

The front part is a MacPherson independent suspension, the lower support arm is made of single-layer steel plate stamping, with a perforated design in the middle, and the steering knuckle is made of cast iron material with a layer of rust on the surface that does not affect safety. The steering rod ball head, lower support arm ball head, small connecting rod, shock absorber and other components were inspected and found to be in normal condition.

Check the middle part of the chassis. There are two obvious scratches on the bottom of the plastic fuel tank, but it does not affect safety. There is no problem with the rest of the parts. Look at the rear, multi link independent suspension type.

Check the rear suspension components, mainly checking that the rubber sleeves and shock absorbers at the connection positions are in normal condition.

When checking the tires, the master found that the condition of the two rear tires was very poor, as shown in the picture below. There were very obvious large cracks on the edges of the tires, and the master said that such tires have significant safety hazards.

Looking at the production date on the side of the tire, 2318 indicates whether the tire was produced in the 23rd week of 2018 or the original configuration of the car, and indeed needs to be replaced.

At the same time as the old engine oil was released, the technician replaced the oil filter and then put down the car. When inspecting the air conditioning filter, it was found to be particularly dirty, as shown in the picture below. This is the side of the air conditioning filter that filters the air, with a lot of dust and impurities.

Looking at the back of the filter element again, it is already damaged and detached, as shown in the picture below. How did this filter element become like this?

Looking at the side of the air conditioning filter again, the master was momentarily speechless and didn't know what to say! As shown in the figure below, the production date of the filter element is 2018, which basically confirms that this is the original air conditioning filter element configured in the car and has never been replaced.

The car owner said he didn't even pay attention to the air conditioning filter, and now it's like this. Hurry up and replace it with a new filter. We should not follow the example of this car owner. If necessary, we should replace it. The air conditioning filter is usually maintained twice and cleaned once in between. If the filter is particularly dirty, we can simply replace it with a new one.