Whistle while you work

I've been baffled over the last few weeks on a whistling coming from my passenger foot well. The car had recently been serviced, and it wasn't until recently driving through London with the radio off to concentrate that the whistling had become rather evident.

Popped in to Westover Corfe Mullen today and they wrenched the polystyrene cover from over the passenger side dash off and took out the cabin filter and put it back in. I listened to another Fabia too to compare and whilst it wasn't as bad as mine, it did have a bit of whistle.

The car didn't have it when I bought it a year ago, so I've (as often is sometimes for a good job when it comes to the car) taken it in to my own hands. The filter when the garage had it out didn't look very clean, so on my way home called in to GSF and bought a new Mann branded one. I batted but managed to get the polystyrene out again minus just one lobe, and took out the filter. The filter if you have never seen it is slotted up under the dashboard held in with a cover and two sliding clips. The Mann filter comes with a handy photographic booklet showing exactly how to do it which is good. It is held in to a plastic frame by the last concertina being slipped over the edge of the frame. The old filter was rather bashed looks and not over the frame fully along the edges, which would be allowing air to avoid being filtered. The new Mann one fitted perfectly and perhaps more snug and better fit than the original VAG branded item.

Upon slotting the filter back in to the housing and refitting the cover it took quite a bit of wiggling adjustment to get a good air tight seal on the filter housing, which is where the whistling was coming from. So if your FAB is not behaving in the wind pipes then try some acrobatics in the foot well.