5 things you didn't know about 4WD SNORKELS

The rearward facing stainless snorkels came from the comp trucks, so when hitting water full sting it wouldn't enter intake, when in trees it wouldn't take the head off and if the car falls over they didn't break. Then it got transferred into the town cars so.....

Petrol and diesel are also incompressible, just like water. The air that occupies most of the cylinder volume, however, is compressible. Replace some of that air with water and you end up with a much higher cylinder pressure on the compression stroke, which bends rods like you said. The fuel doesn't compress, its atomised into droplets and just doesn't take up much space to begin with. It's also a controlled amount, unlike water entering the intake

Hello, my name is Gareth, live in South Africa, grew up in the Eastern Cape and Transkie, was a teenager in the 70 ties!My uncle, who had a trading station in the Willowvale district, developed the "snorkel" as everyone has come to know it, because of endless vehicle trouble involving dust kicked up on gravel roads. He,uncle Ernie Smith, fitted these extensions on the vehicles! It was a winner, worked exceptionally well! A delegation from Toyota, Japan, made a trip to my uncles trading station! All the vehicles used, were Toyota! They were very impressed, promising follow a follow up, which NEVER happened! Never received a dime! All the best buddy 👍

a couple of points from over here in blighty, a rear facing snorkel top is a good idea if travelling through our greenlanes as I have lost two snorkel heads over the years after they got caught on tree branches. I do leave it facing backwards as our lanes are short with lots of road trips between them. If not laning for a while it goes back to facing forwards. After breaking into the air system, I always check the air tightness of the pipework and snorkel by using a haynes manual to seal off the top of the snorkel pipe ( after removing the top ) if the engine stalls then I feel happy it should do its job.

Yep, I had a SWB Prado, dust got past the filter and made its way to the crank shaft bearing, plus every where else. Catastrophic failure, the whole engine was kaput. That was one very expensive lesson, especially in the middle of the Kalahari desert.

Heres the rub, last two decades up until 2021 I have utilised a Safari snorkel, in the last couple of years with the purchase of a now well modified Hilux I have elected to not use a Snorkel. The snorkel equipped vehicles have ALWAYS dirtied up the Unifilters much much more than the non snorkel vehicle. I must admit I drive most of the outback roads and tracks of Australia and am so happy now I have not spent $ on a snorkel. I simply do not drive in the dust of other vehicles or thru water more than 700-800mm deep and guess what it is cool to go around or camp up and wait until water levels drop by 24 hours. OH and by the way those snorkels are noisy bastards.

On my 70 series I swapped the standard Toyota raised air intake (with all its leaks) for a relatively cheap TJM snorkel which is fully sealed and does not require any cutting of the bodywork. Rather than use the TJM supplied ram air intake (which I guess does not really have much of a ram effect) I stayed with the original Toyota cyclonic head. It was a bit fiddly to fit because of the slight mismatch in pipe diam but a piece of 100mm pvc pipe cut lengthwise serves as a filler. End result works like original equipment without the leaks.

I had an AEV snorkel for dust on my 2013 Jeep JKU. I loved it. With the pre filter cap on it I could go more than twice as long without changing my air box filter. It was a great mod

great video! Imho you are explaining things best in the offroad community. Without exaggerations and drama 👍🏼

Great advice indeed, I recently watched a different 4wd show where one driver went fast in a water crossing sucking water down the snorkle and drowning the engine. So drive smartly when going through water :)

Legend Ronny; loving how far your channels come buddy! You should be proud of yourself coz we all are. 👍

I put one on my 1985 4 runner with a vortex top. Keep most dust out. Going deeper than headlights..engine fan issues. Great video, thanks.

You can always use a Donaldson type head on the Safari type snorkel instead of the sock in dusty conditions .Easy to clean.Just empty it each day and you can see the build up on dust in the bowel.I find this more effective ,Cheers.

I had an air filter fail on my kids side X side. I was surprised by the end result. Basically a cylinder polished to a mirror finish to the extent it couldn't hold any oil film. The piston rings where about half the thickness of new ones but I think the lack of any cross hatch on cylinders was the killer. Wish I had noticed the filter had split on the bottom side.

The duckbill valve is also to release water that came past the snorkel head. The ram-type was tested and are very in-effective to remove rain from the snorkel, but the valve still clears.

Thank you Ronni great subject to talk about there is one thing you have for gotten to bring up on this subjected recovery on a tint tray to cover your in take up as the turbo spins up on the back with no lube when the engine is not running

We had a Mack 6x6 wireline truck in Russia. It had been built for the desert and had dual external air cleaners with cyclones and raised caps. I would estimate they would be at least 8 feet from the ground.

Great vid Ron, just wanted to pull you up on the “Ram effect”. It doesn’t exist unless you are going REALLY fast ( like ZX 14 fast) and even then it is minimal. It’s on the wrong side of the butterfly for starters ( it would try to close the throttle under pressure) and it still has the air cleaners to deal with. “Ram Air” induction is sales speak. Thanks for the great videos.

Thank you for this. Ages ago I had to write a huge post on reddit and also make a video about this as someone was having trouble understand it. I'm glad you done a video on it as mine wasn't great and will never reach the same amount of people.

Thanks Ronny! I have been looking for few day for a complete 4wd snorkel tutorial on YouTube. Today, I found your new posted video, perfect timing) Greetings from Canada!