Snorkel

Submitted: Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 18:29
ThreadID: 119631 Views:4210 Replies:7 FollowUps:18
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Hi I have a Mazda BT -50 3.2lt 5cyclinder diesel And was hoping for feed back on using a snorkel to help performance does it help or not
Cheers Greg
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Reply By: Les - PK Ranger - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 18:48

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 18:48
Greg, will almost always assist with performance, and sometimes slightly better economy, especially when combined with an exhaust upgrade.
Mate has one of his PX Ranger, the exhaust, and an ECU tune, mobs more power, and no more fuel over that of original use.

Besides the above, you will get cleaner air, and protect form water ingestion at water crossings.
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Follow Up By: Shaker - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 19:45

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 19:45
I have fitted several snorkels to vehicles both with & without exhaust upgrades, & have never noticed an increase in performance due to the snorkel & have noticed slightly worse fuel economy!
The exhaust is a completely different matter!
With the snorkel, not only do you have to push the it through the air, but it also upsets the aerodynamics of the air flow down the whole side of the vehicle.

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Follow Up By: Les - PK Ranger - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 20:48

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 20:48
Pushing a snorkel through the air ? Really ?
Well, I guess you don't have one fitted now then ?
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Follow Up By: Shaker - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 23:03

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 23:03
Yes, really! Unless you remove it before you move the vehicle, winding a window down will use more fuel too!
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Follow Up By: Shaker - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 23:05

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 23:05
....... And by the way, a bull bar, suspension lift, wide wheels, roof rack etc, will all cost fuel economy!
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Follow Up By: Member - Stephen L (Clare SA) - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 23:12

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 23:12
Hi Shaker

It sounds like you live in the city.

As for you comments below, if manufactures did so much research, then why do they put the air intake under the front guard where it sucks in dust and is in the most useless location.

If you are using your vehicle on bitumen roads, then no big deal, but driving constantly on dirt roads and you will be replacing your air cleaner elements a lot quicker than when using a snorkel.

Just for the clean air alone, a snorkel is the very first accessory thst I would fit to any four wheel drive. Then what about that unexpected deeper than you expected water crossing without a snorkel?

Give me a snorkel any day for piece of mind.

Any other bennifits are then a bonus.


Cheers


Stephen
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Follow Up By: gbc - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 06:29

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 06:29
Exhaust upgrades on the px mazda/fords are linked with numerous turbo failures on the forums. There is nil warranty for this if you run into trouble as a few have found out.
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Follow Up By: Shaker - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 07:49

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 07:49
Stephen, you couldn't be more wrong, I live right on the edge of the Victorian High Country & wouldn't be without a snorkel.
All I have said is that they use more fuel than they save, albeit infinitesimal. I would be more than interested to know the difference in the density of the dust between 1 & 2 metres above the track, in the Outback I replace the ram head with a Donaldson pre-filter.
I also said that almost every mod that we do will use more fuel.

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Follow Up By: Les - PK Ranger - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 09:01

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 09:01
Without a doubt a snorkel is one of the first mods anyone who travels anywhere off the blacktop should do, for a variety of reasons.
It's been well known through the years, in all areas of the auto industry, that any vehicle will perform better when it is supplied more clean air, and when you can get the exhaust away from the motor better.

As you said, any difference (either way) in economy will be infinitesimal, probably not something the average layman could measure easily.
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Follow Up By: Robin Miller - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 09:50

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 09:50


I have to include one of my favourite pictures here showing sand being thrown up into the snorkel on our Super Patrol.

While I prefer other solutions than a snorkel I am not putting snorkels, down but its worth considering that all is not always as it first seems.

My friend with BT50 has fitted snokel/exhaust and the car does go better , but another has had his 2 year old one blow up for reasons not fully determined just yet.

So my concern would be for warranty issues should something go wrong !
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Reply By: Hoyks - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 21:39

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 21:39
I'm with Shaker here, you don't fit a snorkel for a performance or economy gain.

By fitting a snorkel you are getting a few more feet of induction plumbing, this has to have an effect on the air flow into the engine. Manufactures do lots of calculations to get the optimum inlet tract length and diameter to give a power at what is the best throttle setting. Whacking a few feet of polly pipe into the system will mess their good work up a tad.

Ram air effect I hear you cry? With a motor at 3/4 throttle it will be sucking in a considerable volume of air, I don't think a snorkel head will make much difference to the air available at the air cleaner at all, unless it is compared to a snorkel without a forward facing head. A engineer at work that is a lot smarter than me did the calculations, at best it is insignificant.
And on a modern turbo diesel vehicle it is all basically irrelevant as the turbo is sucking in air and pumping the intake tract up to whatever psi anyway. The engine can only fill with so much and the ECU is only supplying fuel to match the air volume that is coming in. It may spool up fractionally quicker if it gets air volume easier, but when you are accelerating the air velocity at the snorkel head is low, so that point is moot.

You get a snorkel to reduce the dust going into the air cleaner and to reduce the chance of water getting in there too. For that reason alone they are worth the money.
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Follow Up By: Hoyks - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 21:46

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 21:46
I fitted one to my old 2.5L non turbo Courier, for 0 performance gain... It had none when I started and still had none when I finished.

I put one on my '13 BT50 and had the same outcome. No significant change, but I did get a nice throaty induction sound when I had the drivers window down and a cool sounding wheeze when I shut down and the turbo pressure bleeds back up the snorkel.

For a better result, fit a EGR blanking plate, that mod saved me close to 1L/100km and was under $10, ok, probably closer to $50 as I had to buy new spanners and bled a bit as it is a bugger of a job to access. You get more power off the line from idle and less turbo lag.
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Follow Up By: Les - PK Ranger - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 09:07

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 09:07
You only have to look at the OEM intake opening size, vs the ram head, to see how much more air can get to the moter through a snorkel.
The snorkel wall m2 would do nothing significant to stop the airflow.
When you put your hand or anything in front of a snorkel ram head at idle it is easy to feel just how much air is being taken into the head, significant.

I suggest with economy, many people just use any extra gains from mods by driving (even ever so slightly) more aggressively, more like a Falcadore type of driving from the lights, instead of the better diesel light foot to gain lower fuel usage.
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Follow Up By: Member - Broodie H3 - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:38

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:38
Good morning all,
I am just going through the forum and I came across this from Hoyks 'for better result fit an EGR BLANKING PLATE'. I have problems with the egr valve on my Pathfinder, and so far it has been fixed under warranty, it seems to last about 30k klms before giving problems, my question is if you block off the egr valve, what systems do you shut down and do you still get the engine failure warning light and buzzer sounding all the time.?. as you can probably guess not to mechanically minded especially on new cars.
Broodie H3
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Follow Up By: Les - PK Ranger - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 12:24

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 12:24
Broodie, blocking the EGR system will usually lead to a CEL (check engine light) appearing on all modern systems.
It is usually a P0401 insufficient EGR flow.

You can generally overcome this by having a small hole in the blanking plate (usually 10mm - 12mm or so), or I have seen this done in the EGR butterfly plate itself with operational vacuum line disconnection, and although this seems to defeat the purpose a little, it does stop a large % of particles being put through the intake system.
Other things you can do to eliminate CEL is an ECU tune, expensive but you can get other tuning benefits too, or on some vehicles you might be able to keep the EGR closed with vacuum line disconnections.
The CEL is the big issue, need to keep this off to enable other (possibly genuine) warnings to be picked up.

The PJ / PK Ranger and BT50 equivalent has a new experimental mapper that keeps the EGR closed, and no CEL, also can adjust fuel up / down a little for power of econ when needed.
See thread here Manual mapper
This also allows for full blanking plate and the dreaded EGR cooler to be blocked off, as these are notorious for failures anytime from around the 100k mark.

Hopefully once trials are done, the maker will work on other makes and models, as this is a far better unit than some coming out of the US (at the moment for Mits Triton / Pajero) that aren't quite as safe with their cheap fix (5c - 10c resistor to trick ECU into thinking it's below 5c or whatever temp the EGR stays shut at).

You can also fit an oil catch can, which won't stop the EGR particulates recycling, but does stop the oily mist recycling to the intake.
When the oil mist is mixed with the particulates, this is where you can get the MAP sensor all caked up, and eventually the intake manifold is severely restricted with the black tar like gunk, sometimes blocking up nearly completely !

I have had a Provent 200 style can form about 50k, now 100k, and my intake manifold is pretty clean.
MAP cleans since just show the dusty black soot from the EGR, but now with the mapper mentioned above, I hope to both get better performance / fuel econ, and less soot in the system too, which can lead to engine oil going black sooner.

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Follow Up By: Hoyks - Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 at 08:54

Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 at 08:54
No check engine light for a blanking plate on this model, the old one yes and you needed a hole. The current one, no.
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Reply By: Jackolux - Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 23:39

Monday, Jul 27, 2015 at 23:39
I have always fitted my 4Wd's with a Snorkel because I drive through rivers , as for performance increase , nope ,
AnswerID: 557454

Reply By: Bob Y. - Qld - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 08:29

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 08:29
Don't know that you can class a snorkel as a performance add-on, on a turbo' vehicle. Might help a N/A vehicle a bit though?

If one spends over $40K on a new 4wd, why not fit a $400 snorkel as insurance against one of those " bleep , that creek didn't look that deep" moments. A hydrauliced engine is going to do more than just spoil your holiday.

Dust benefits, against most factory fittings, are probably huge too, though not following too closely to the vehicle in front is probably a bigger help to reduce dust ingress.

Economy improvements would have to be minimal, because you'll probably add drawers, bar work, 2 fridges and other fruit, that will take the vehicle up close too, if not above the GVM. No real economy with a heavy vehicle.

Bob

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Reply By: Gronk - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:14

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 10:14
Extra performance......nope
Better economy.....nope
Water crossings......yep
Dust ingress........yep, yep !

On a 200 series, it sucks from the inner guard.....with big flutes straight out into the area where the tyres run......so it will be sucking dust ALL the time you are on dirt roads.

So, for this reason alone ( depending on make of 4wd ) a snorkel is a must if you like heading out west.
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Follow Up By: Member - Broodie H3 - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:45

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 11:45
Gronk, I see were on the same page lol Fitted the snorkel when we brought the pathfinder 550 ti would not be with out one, if people are worried about fuel economy don't buy four wheel drives and go exploring this great country of ours.
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Reply By: 671 - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 21:12

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 21:12
I fitted a Safari to my non turbo diesel for river crossings only. I was not expecting a performance gain and I did not get one.

I noticed it came with a large steel disc like an oversize washer with a hole in it that matched the original air intake system. I can only assume that it is a restriction to keep the air flow down too original specifications. I would imagine most people would discard it in order to get more air in but the air is still flowing through the original inlet valve in the engine so I doubt if you will get anymore through it.

As for aerodynamics: It would have to cause a reduction in the factory designed air flow over the body but I doubt if a 4wd could go fast enough to notice any difference.

Around ten to fifteen years ago, a US hot rod magazine ran a full feature on wind tunnel testing a Chev powered Ford roadster that was having trouble getting over the 200 mph barrier on the Bonneville salt lakes. They found its little air intake bonnet scope caused a lot of drag and placing it through the top of the grille just below the bonnet line made a big difference.

The stock under fender air intake on 4wds looks like it is in the worst possible place yet most if not all manufacturers do it. It is in a partially sealed compartment up there between the body and the plastic inner fender liner. In the photo Robin posted, heaps of dust is flying back off the wheel but had the snorkel not been there the air would have been coming through around the headlight are where there is no dust. It would be filling the under fender compartment with some of it going into the engine and the rest escaping out through tiny gaps here and there and preventing the entry of dust in the process.

It is hard to criticize the under fender air intakes without first seeing the factory air flow diagrams. I would not be surprised if the whole system is far better than it looks.
AnswerID: 557482

Follow Up By: Gronk - Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 22:01

Tuesday, Jul 28, 2015 at 22:01
If you have a look at a 200 series, it isn't in a partially sealed area....it sucks from the inner guard area...with big flutes in the plastic inner guard to let all the air (dust) in..

The pic Robin posted is someone playing in sand, not a normal type of occurance on out back roads.
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Follow Up By: Les - PK Ranger - Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 at 09:00

Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 at 09:00
That sort of 'rooster tail' can occur in normal dune driving Gronk, though it is rare if you have the tyre pressures right and know how to drive sand, slow and steady, or back up before you start spinning wheels for another run with more momentum.
Really soft sand and peaky beach dunes like the SE of SA, you can certainly get the type of scenario in the pic of Robins above.

I actually typed up a reply to Robins pic yesterday and thought I'd posted it, but it's not there . . . was basically . . .

Have had this happen a few times over the years down the SA SE dunes, and even with my ram head facing forward and getting a pile of sand briefly right into it and over the screen (a combo of that very soft stuff and some wind direction), there was no sand of consequence in the airbox, nor in the snorkel when a reverse gentle air blow out was done at home later.
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Follow Up By: Gronk - Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 at 09:15

Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 at 09:15
Yeh, I've played in the sand as well mate, I was just saying it's not normal when you are driving in the outback.
And even if it got in the snorkel, there would be something drastically wrong if sand got thru the filter and into the engine.
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Reply By: Jackolux - Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 at 11:09

Wednesday, Jul 29, 2015 at 11:09
I have never read so much BS about fitting a Snorkel , like I have said above I have fitted a snorkel to all my 4x4's , for water crossings , that's what they were originally designed for .
In dust they might provide cleaner air , has anyone really done a comparison , with and without a snorkel in the exact same conditions , very hard to do , I would think .

I guess adding a snorkel to a vehicle , will affect it aerodynamics a little , it could very well use more fuel , would it even be enough to measure , I doubt it .

I bought a new Dmax in Jan this year , I have kept a record of all fuel used from day one

I had a Safari Snorkel fitted 2 weeks ago , so far the tank to tank average , I haven't noticed any difference .

Over about 11000k pre Snorkel the Dmax had averaged 10.4 lt x 100k ,
I really don't expect that to change much , now I have a Snorkel ,
I haven't changed anything else on the vehicle , same load , same tyre pressures , same driving .

Time will tell , I guess .

AnswerID: 557501

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