Snorkel

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.

Pushing a snorkel through the air ? Really ?
Well, I guess you don't have one fitted now then ?

Yes, really! Unless you remove it before you move the vehicle, winding a window down will use more fuel too!

....... And by the way, a bull bar, suspension lift, wide wheels, roof rack etc, will all cost fuel economy!

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

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.

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.

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.

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 !

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.

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.

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, 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.

No check engine light for a blanking plate on this model, the old one yes and you needed a hole. The current one, no.

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.

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.

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.

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.