The part in question is part of your intake duct. With the cover in place air is drawn into your air filter from the front of your car through the grill. With the cover removed air can be drawn from under your bonnet.

Normally you'd want to draw air from the front of your car since the air temp outside of your car will likely be lower than the engine-heated air found under your bonnet, but I suppose in very cold conditions removing the cover might help ?

You can leave it off as it's safe to drive without it (basically everyone running a aftermarket cone filter is doing the same thing)

 

The part in question is part of your intake duct. With the cover in place air is drawn into your air filter from the front of your car through the grill. With the cover removed air can be drawn from under your bonnet.

Normally you'd want to draw air from the front of your car since the air temp will likely be lower than the air heated by your engine but I suppose in very cold conditions removing the cover might help ?

You can leave it off as it's safe to drive without it (basically everyone running a aftermarket cone filter is doing the same thing)

Much appreciated 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

 

Note: If you want to replace the damaged cover the part number 1K0805965J (stamped on the inside of the cover) is the number to use. A quick Google search shows the cover to be inexpensive. It isn't "mission critical" so it can be sourced from anywhere / anyone who has one in stock.

 

Perfect - thank you.

 

The updated version of this part, I believe 1K0805965L, actually has a rectangular hole cut in the top of it...proving even more it doesn't really need to exist altogether, lol. But I don't really understand why they did that either. In theory the open-top one would give a bit more engine nose but probably no so much it's even noticeable in most vehicles. But the Gen 2 and later 1.8T engines seem to all have that one, which looks like this:

A lot of times these also pop out and then fall down, then get caught in either the rad fans or the the accessory belt 🤦‍♂️ The one on my TT (different design being an S but similar concept) did exactly that. Got destroyed and I had to get a new one...which I don't even know why I bothered with it lol. The new one mostly stays on but I've caught it popped off once or twice too (thankfully not going anywhere on these occasions).