Engine Intake Snorkel
Driving in a challenging terrain and/or climate can have a dramatic impact on the longevity of any engine. Water, dust and air temperature can all damage an engine over time, and water in particular can stop an engine dead in its tracks if a sufficient quantity is ingested into the engine's intake.
Even shallow water crossings can cause water ingestion if the vehicle is travell-ing at a faster speed.
The easiest way to combat this, aside from not driving the vehicle in hostile conditions, is to elevate the point at which the air enters the system. By doing so, water and dust infiltration can be reduced or eliminated, and the higher the intake is off the ground, the further it is away from the huge heat sink that increases ambient air temperature. In other words, terra firma.
The universally accepted way of accomplishing this is to install a snorkel. Mounted firmly to the fender of the vehicle, the inlet for most snorkels sits at or above the top of the windshield. This can be as much as four feet above the conventional intake of most cars. It therefore provides a significant improvement to the quality of the air entering the engine.
The Safari Snorkel virtually disappears into the lines of the Defender.
Although there are a number of different brands of commercially available snorkels, as well as a myriad of home made solutions, probably the best known provider of these accessories is Safari Snorkels based out of Australia. These are distributed in North America by ARB 4x4. Since there was a specific model of Safari Snorkel for our model of Land Rover, we elected to take the easy way out, and just buy one of those.
We did, however, add a new air filter/airbox to the system to bring the Defender air filtering into the modern age. That way we could buy modern air filter elements like the ones used in todays high tech automobiles. We bought an airbox kit from the Italian 4x4 accessory manufacturer Equipe4x4. Along with the box, they also supplied the new 3" diameter intake flex hose as well as the interface elbow that mounted to the inside of the fender where the hole was to be cut for the snorkel exit port.
You can look at the photos below individually with the descriptions, or open a "picture only" slideshow here.
Snorkel & Airbox installation Sequence
The first step was to remove the old air filter cylinder, intake hose and mass flow sensor.
Once the old filter chamber was removed, we had to get in with a grinder and remove the old mounting bracket so the new square box would fit in the old round cavity. This was the toughest (read awkward) part of the job.
A three inch hole had to be hole sawed into the side of the fender. This is definitely one of those times when you measure not twice, but rather five or more times before the cut. A mistake on an aluminum fender is hard to correct, and would be costly.
Along with the 3" hole, the three screw holes had to be drilled. The tricky thing here was getting the inside steel elbow positioned in a very tight and awkward place. To get it in the right place we ended up having to cut a notch in the plastic fender flare. Fussy, very very fussy.
The air box came standard with a light blue textured powder coated finish. It clashed with the overall look, so we took a black and silver spray can to it to make it look more appealing.
We also bought a silver and black Land Rover badge, which I think is from a Range Rover Sport, and stuck it on for good looks.
The position of the air box inlet is at a different angle than the old one, so we couldn't reuse the factory shaped intake hose anymore. This is where the hose from Equipe4x4 came in useful.
Another hose similar to a dryer vent hose was snaked in from the fender elbow to the bottom of the new air box. All this had to be figured out and tested before we cut the hole in the fender. That hose can't be seen here, as it drops down underneath of the brake assembly to get over to the air box.
The standard snorkel top fitting, seen in the larger photo above, was later replaced with the modern version of a tractor centrifugal dust separator seen here. They help to make the expensive air filter elements last longer.
This transparent unit turned out to be defective, and eventually had to be replaced. The clear plastic cracked because of the sunlight, so the manufacturer replaced the whole device with another one made from black ABS plastic at no charge.
We used another of the Protection and Performance aluminum roll bar clamping blocks to secure the upper end of the snorkel. The bracket that was supplied wasn't very attractive.