Scirocco Register

Whilst crawling around doing the bottom end of my engine noticed that the 'folded' rubber washer (see diagram) is shabby and also discontinued since last year at VW and doesn't appear on VW Heritage's site. Do we reckon a piece of suitable rubber cut to shape will do whatever the original does?

I'm not sure how much use the washer is and what it really does but if you want to replace yours they are available new from here or ebay.
http://www.classic-vw.co.uk/transmission-939-c.asp

Was missing on my last one. Didn't seem to make any difference

Cheers chaps. I'm sure it is the usual VW drive for extra smoothness of transmission or something, i.e. unnecessary over engineering!