Here's the deal with the intermediate flange down in your valley: it's plastic, it's wedged into the coolant path, and it spends its whole life getting baked by heat and soaked in hot coolant. That's a recipe for failure and VW served it up anyway. Eventually the plastic gets brittle, cracks, swells, or just starts seeping coolant somewhere you can't easily see, and then you're tearing into the valley to fix a part that never should've been plastic in the first place.

This is the metal version that ends the saga. We machined it from solid 6061-T6 billet to drop straight into the OE spot, sealing the coolant path properly with no brittle plastic left to get tired and let go. It's a one-and-done fix for a corner of the engine that was quietly waiting to ruin your weekend.

And here's what sets this one apart from the delete-only flange: it's the OE configuration, so it keeps your coolant path exactly the way the factory intended. EGR stays put, completely smog safe and road legal, no deleting anything required. This is purely about ripping out doomed plastic and putting proper metal in its place.

We highly recommend replacing the Coolant Bypass Valve while you're in there. We make a great kit for this