Regardless of what the technicians at your native drive-up oil change store attempt to promote you, changing a automobile’s cabin air filter is normally a quite simple activity. Most vehicles’ cabin air filters are deep contained in the glove compartment or someplace simply accessible below the hood, however generally automakers determine to squirrel it away someplace infuriatingly troublesome to succeed in. Sadly, the latter applies to Volkswagen’s ultra-cool if slow-selling ID Buzz, which for some purpose virtually requires disassembly of your entire entrance of the automobile so as to substitute the cabin air filter.
I beloved driving the ID Buzz after I lived with one for every week, however now that I’ve discovered how absurdly troublesome Volkswagen made it to interchange a easy half that requires comparatively frequent substitute, I’ve combined emotions. When automakers do issues like this, it forces most house owners to take their automobile right into a service heart to have a easy filter substitute carried out, which in fact requires them to pay greater than they need to. Come on, Volkswagen, the ID Buzz is already costly sufficient!
That is ridiculous
On this TikTok, a technician paperwork the prolonged technique of swapping out the cabin air filter on a 2024 ID Buzz. First, you must pop the Buzz’s comical entrance service flap, disconnect {an electrical} connector, disconnect the windshield wiper fluid reservoir, unclip one of many cables, ans unscrew two bolts towards the bulkhead. Subsequent, you must open the entrance doorways to unscrew an higher trim piece from the aspect of the Buzz earlier than unscrewing a bolt that fastens one other panel above the entrance hood flap and repeat that course of on the opposite aspect of the Buzz. As soon as that is completed, you elevate that higher entrance trim piece off the automobile and unplug one other connector from it earlier than unfastening a cloth flap that covers the cabin air filter housing. Then you’ll be able to lastly take away the panel that hides the air filter and substitute it with a brand new one. When you’re completed, you in fact have to interchange the entire trim items you simply eliminated, plug the entire electrical connections again in, reconnect the windshield wiper fluid reservoir, and shut the hood flap. It is so simple as that!
Clearly I am being sarcastic. This course of is infuriatingly overcomplicated, and it leaves large margins for error whether or not it is misplacing bolts, scratching exterior panels, or reconnecting issues improperly. I get that the ID Buzz is formed in a different way than all different vehicles in the marketplace, however I see no possible justification for such a convoluted method to finding the cabin air filter. One factor’s for positive: it’s going to hold Volkswagen seller’s service departments in enterprise.
