shindaiwa EB45 backpack blower

I picked this up at a garage sale for what I thought might be a decent price. came with original manual and purchase reciept from new..... 2 sisters in (Im guessing) their late 50s selling off their departed Dad's stuff..... I could tell this thing had sat a bit, and it has. I got it started with gas dribbled in spark plug hole, sounded good.... the mice had had their way with it. the air filter was all chewed up, original carb is seized from mouse pizz.... I found a replacement Walbro that looks real close (I couldn't find an original WT40, found brand new WT180 for about the cost of a rebuild kit and bought that)
the main thing I still need is either a new air filter (or good used one) could use carb mount gaskets but can make those I suppose/
I cannot find an air filter element anywhere, number I am finding is 70029-82400. Plan B is to find a different filter housing of some kind, and accompanying air filter. I have discovered that Echo and Shindaiwa are somehow related, an Echo equivalent or alternative would work.....
and 1 more thing.... at the throttle control end, what holds the column jacket for the throttle cable into the throttle control itself?

I have made air filters out of generic filter foam, or even cut up and used vacuum cleaner bags. My wife had the smoke leak out of a vacuum, and she had new spare bags for it.

This mounts high up on the backpack blower, carb is down low with a long tube connecting them. Even if I had to get a different air cleaner mount where it would be directly on the carb and do away with that long tube, I'd be ok with that if it means being able to use a more readily available filter

Echo and Shindaiwa appear to be sister companies----they have been owned and distributed by the same parent company for about a dozen years. A Google search showed a few diagram pictures of the air filter and housing. It's nothing like anything I have seen before on other equipment. I ran across one 2006 post in a garden forum where the poster was trying to find the same filter. It had been discontinued and apparently was not available 15 years ago. I doubt that you are going to find one.

Rigging an air filter that you can attach to your carb should not be a major problem. The issue I see is that a blower is often used in very dusty conditions and the original air filter was designed to have a large surface area. A filter used on other small two cycle equipment generally has a much smaller filter surface area because a chainsaw or trimmer isn't designed for extended use in very dusty conditions.

got it running, runs pretty good, original Walbro WT40 NLA anywhere, I found a genuine Walbro WT180 HO (huh?) that looked close on Ebay, and was about teh same money as a kit would have been for that original carb. Shaft was seized, carb was full of that white powder residue (looked like lime dust) and wouldnt come off or the shaft wouldnt unfreeze even after many many trips thru an ultrasonic....
so now the search is on for some sort of filter. I went back to the original selling dealer (I got the paperwork with it when I bought it, new in 91) thinking if theyd been around that long maybe they might have one more left from back in teh day but, no. he sold me a parts hand held blower that is within 5 years old thinking I could use the filter and housing from it but no. Not with how the throttle cable attaches/ and with the choke being part of the cup that the rubber boot that goes to filter, attaches to.... I'm thinking of making something out of a cut down furnace filter or piece of scotch brite type material... gotta be better than nothing I guess..... This is something I'll only be using occasionally thru the year/ other than leaf harvest season.... not daily blowing dusty parking lots and such, with....and for what I have into this thing vs what a comparable new unit costs, if I get a few years out of it I'll have my money's worth. I have a feeling it'll outlast me with such a filter.