What's this?

Hello
1990 200tdi 90 defender
Found bits of this while poking around in the inner wing area near washer bottle / heater box. Feels like perished cork of approx 15 mm thickness. I'm guessing it's it's some sort of gasket but where from please?
50p coin for scale.

Heater box to bulkhead gasket or air intake to heater box gasket is my guess.

its air intake to heater gasket, originally it was round in shape

Thanks both. Could this be why the cabin gets a bit "fumey"? Is it straight forward to replace by a keen amateur armed with a Haynes manual?

It's a wing-wam fert ducks ter perk on!
Obvus innit!!

"Could this be why the cabin gets a bit "fumey"?"

Yes, instead of drawing in air from the wing top vent it is instead drawing it in from under the bonnet area.

Dead easy fix.
Remove wing top grill, drop intake duct to and remove what remains of the old foam seal. Clean up the lip on the heater-box and stick on the new foam seal. Put the duct back into place and attach the grill.
Simples!

Sorry, forgot to add.
Part number is MRC8378, comes as a straight strip of foam with adhesive on one side.

Litch said:

Sorry, forgot to add.
Part number is MRC8378, comes as a straight strip of foam with adhesive on one side.

Click to expand...

Many thanks. Much appreciated!

what sort of fumes? if it's not exhaust but water vapour then it could be your heater matrix could be shot?

have you had to keep topping the water up?

Exhaust. No water loss