Snorkel Sealing

As mentioned in a previous post, the seal around the snorkel seemed to be loose. This was confirmed when I washed it last time, I took the air filter out and to my surprise found water in the water catcher thing at the bottom and a fairly soiled air cleaner.

Click here to view the photo album. There are descriptions beneath each picture to explain what is happening.

By now you will have seen the seal that appears to be incorrectly installed. Clearly someone slacked off that day! It goes without saying that if we had gotten stuck for a length of time in bonnet high water, we would have ruined the motor. The flip side of that pessimist thinking is that the air cleaner is so well designed that even without a snorkel, you’d be unlikely to do any damage as long as you kept moving through nearly any river.

The reasons I say that:

Size – it’s huge which means you will take a long time to clog it with dust or suck water through it.
Top pickup – It’ll take a while for water to get high enough in the enclosure (it’s like 30cm high)
Bottom purge trap - beneath the main filter is a trap to catch water, bugs, rocks that are sucked in. This trap has a rubber flap on it, that provided there is low pressure inside the assembly it will hold it water tight. When you stop the motor and there is no longer low pressure, it sags a bit to let out any accumulated water.

Our car, even in it’s unsealed state, could have crossed hundreds of rivers without problem… the only chance of damage would have come from if we had got stuck motionless… with water over the bonnet. Unlikely I know, but hey.

What was concerning about the seal been damaged is that it was allowing rain water in… seriously. There was water lines on the inside of the snorkel base which no doubt would have been sucked into the air cleaner when the car was started. Another interesting thing that suggests this has been like it since the day it was made, is there is rust in the bottom purge trap which would indicate it’s often getting water in it.

Another little lesson about air intakes is that they follow ‘the path of least resistance’. Even if you have a pinhole or two in the system, it’s only going to draw air/dust/water through there if it’s easier than pulling it down the nice big snorkel. Now that’s not to say water won’t casually fill through the hole, but it is to say that the motor isn’t going to try and suck water if it’s easier to pull air.