What's this?

After loosing water and putting it down to a split hose. This evening I attempted to remove the hose but the piece of metal it was attached to (see pic) snapped off in three places. Could somebody kindly inform me what it is so I can search for a replacement. Many thanks, Tom.

Specifically where on the Engine, and Which engine do you have that you are working on.

thats a metal insert used to hold the inlet heater thermoswitch on early mk1 carb. some have another thermoswitch for the carb heater as well.

was this one actually in use? later engines have the thermoswitch(es) in the front flange. if you need this piece its been NLA for a while so it could be a bit of a struggle to get!

single thermoswitch pipe is 055131223D or 056919369B depending on your engine code, 2 switch one is 035919369

if its a single one you need I have found another one from a different engine code, part number 035919369N which you can get from classic parts. its a 2 switch one but you can just ignore the black switch:
https://www.vwheritage.com/vw_act_vwclassicParts.search.htm?classicSearchType=pnum&classicSearchText=035919369N

The car's a 1982 tin top. 1500cc. I believe it was in use, as was all connected up. I'm not home until tomorrow so will attempt to trace back the wires then. I forgot to mention there were two terminals on the piece I broke and one of those snapped off as well, it's not that clear in the picture. I took a couple of photos before starting work on the car. I will upload them now to see if they can shed any light. The first pic shows which hose the broken piece was connected to. Second pic shows the actual piece that I broke from above. Thanks guys.

right you need 035919369 then, as I can see its still got the original carb on there with autochoke heater. but unfortunately that one is NLA

the 035919369N is similar but the black thermoswitch is the wrong rating for the autochoke it will cut off too early, from goo0gle images it does look like it has threads in the side if so you could drill a hole in one of the blanks and use a later carb threaded thermoswitch. or you might be able to swap the old white sw2irtch with the black one, though im not sure how they are attached… looks like they may be bonded in?

or if you have any spare sensor tapping in the front or side flanges you could get the dual one and fit a later carb choke thermoswitch there instead