850 cabin air filter snorkel

[grntrdbx]

I ordered a new cabin air filter for a 1995 850 turbo wagon I've been picking away on this year (my first 850), and after opening up the cowl to change it, I realized....wait for it....yes, there is no cabin air filter. Crap, I could have added the aftermarket snorkel that will hold a P1 filter with my last IPD order. Anyway, winter is coming to Michigan, and the snorkel is wide open on the top, and if you live in a rural area or near a field or woods, you know where I'm going with this....mice making a cozy winter home in your car. Well, until I make another order big enough to avoid shipping costs from IPD, I thought I would make a grille to close off the snorkel so rodents would have one less easy entry into the cabin. While you're in there, make sure the drain next to the snorkel is cleaned out and flows water, mine was probably never flushed and was caked with rotten leaves and such, letting water from a heavy rain flow through the heater fan squirrel cage and onto my passenger's feet.....don't ask, just clean it out or you'll end up pulling back the carpet and cutting out and removing the old padding and replacing it. My car must have been doing this some time before I bought it because the passenger footwell carpet was dirty/mildewy and squishy. I ended up cleaning, disinfecting the carpet and replacing the padding with 1/2" closed cell foam. All is well.
Getting back to the grille on the snorkel, I ended up using some aluminum lath (like for plastering walls), cutting it to size and crimping it around the edges. This should work as well as using some kind of wire mesh strong enough to crimp and stay in shape and with openings small enough to keep mice out. Good luck.

And don't forget to clean out the drains on both ends of the cowl cover while you're at it.

[erikv11]

I like it!

If/when you do get the cabin filter, it may be worth it to spend a couple extra bucks and buy the housing from Volvo ($30 or so). There have been a handful of posts about leaking water into the cabin with the aftermarket ones, that was cured by popping in the Volvo unit. The Volvo ones are of course also readily available at the junkyards.

[brunocerous]

Holy moly, that "before" picture does look like a perfect, snuggly place for a chilly rodent! What a great-looking repair!

I have a VW EuroVan with an cabin filter cover that a mouse or some such creature gnawed through to cozy up to the filter itself. Now that I see your fix, I think I'll go take care of that, maybe with steel hardware cloth. The square mesh has smaller openings than lath or chicken wire. It's what we used to keep predators out of our backyard henhouse.