Question for you Bob, have you ever seen an air filter where the coir fibers had deteriorated to the point where they would require replacement? As you alluded to earlier, the VW engineers may never have contemplated what 50 years of being bathed in oil would do to their coir fiber filters. What is your preferred cleaning method? I was thinking of dumping my filter in a parts washer in a solution of "Simple Green" and water.
Where would a person buy coir fiber if it did need replacing?
Yes, many times. But not deteriorated in the sense you mean. The most common problem was having people try to burn them out, following the procedure used for the Model A Ford air-cleaner.
In the others the fibers has become brittle, falling out in little pieces when the canister was shaken. I assume these were soaked in an inappropriate cleaner containing a chemical that attacked the coir. (I know lots of guys use gasoline or diesel fuel as cleaning solvent instead of kerosene.)
The manual calls for soaking the canister in kerosene for 30 minutes. (We simply turned it upside down and filled it.) Then sloshing in a bucket of kerosene, then allowed to drip/dry for 24 hours.
In dusty climates or areas having few paved roads, cleaning the air filter (and changing the oil) was required as often as once a week. (The dust gets sucked into the sump, hence the need to change the oil.) If running in flour-fine silt, as found on many dry lakes, you may need to do this once per DAY.
I don't know. There used to be junkyards specific to Volkswagens, where you could buy a replacement air cleaner. When that isn't available you may wish to consider a turbo-type air cleaner as used on farm equipment.
Disposable, treated paper filter elements are another option but you usually have to fabricate a suitable housing. This is pretty easy in an early bus, where you fit the air cleaner to the roof of the engine compartment, but more difficult in a bug, where you usually end up with something similar to the '74 & later models.
Something you DON'T want to consider is an air cleaner made of window screen and gauze that depends on some kind of Secret Sauce for its filtering abilities.
Oh no, would not consider one of those K&N "magic" filters. I think my original VW filter is still in pretty good shape. Just trying to think for the future, about what might break down the road sometime and what I might have to do to fix it. I've got lots of parts stashed away just because certain parts are getting hard to find in good quality or in some cases even getting crappy South American or Asian spares is getting a little iffy.
I did do a little hunting around the internet and did find someone who sells 22lb bales of coir fiber. Way more that I would ever want and more $$ than I'd want to spend. Of course, you might be able to get then to sell you a few handfuls cheap.
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