Snorkel installation

Some time ago I bought a tent from a guy, and he told me that getting a snorkel installed would be a smart investment. In principle it’s an insurance against engine failure when driving into water that ends up being deeper than anticipated. The engine would breathe in water and catastrophically fail. And that would be the end of the adventure.

So, I decided to take this advice to heart and bought a snorkel. Once I had that in my possession I noticed there were no instructions with it. This is apparently normal, as normally such a thing would be installed by a professional. I wanted to give it a try myself and browsed around on the intertubes until I found some more information on forums and pinterest.

The best, and most applicable, instruction I could find was in Spanish. But Google is your friend! http://toyotakzj.mforos.com/1665764/9154866-instalacion-snorkel-kzj/

All the parts.

All the parts.

The template that came with the snorkel was the only "instruction" supplied.

The template that came with the snorkel was the only “instruction” supplied.

It's hella scary to start drilling into the side of your car!

It’s hella scary to start drilling into the side of your car!

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Once you start, just keep going. There is no way back…

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It’s important to measure the size of the snorkel’s terminal connection. The two small holes in the template serve as the centre of 2 larger connective circles.

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Now for the really scary stuff!

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Getting there…

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Almost done. Just need to connect the individual holes.

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There! It’s still a terrible mess, but it’s starting to look like a proper hole.

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I made the edges are nice and smooth with a Grinding drill bit.

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Now we’re getting to the internal tubing. We need to remove the filter box to start this process. The filter box connects to the… connective tube. No idea what this is called. It’s in the next picture.

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The S-shaped connective tube. This stuff is not waterproof at all. I bought some black silicone kit. I couldn’t find Silastic, which is what I saw online a lot. I hope Bison mastic silicone kit (auto marine) will hold up for a while as well.

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Attaching the upper connector to the car. I don’t have any more pictures of this. I drilled the holes. Actually I didn’t even properly measure this. I just drew some dots through the metal, and drilled the holes. After this I attached the metal bit with 4 rivets. Solid as a rock.

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Fitting the rubber connector tube to the filter box was a little hard. There isn’t a lot of room so I needed to cut and modify the rubber and metal some, to make it fit better. I’m sure it’s waterproof enough like this.

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I sawed off some plastic from the extra piece of tubing that was supplied with the snorkel and fitted it S-shaped connector tube to strengthen it. This plastic was pretty soft and malleable. This end will connect to the filterbox..

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When connecting the snorkel to the body, I noticed the mallet was not perfect… I decided to leave this one. With one screw missing, it’s still very solid.

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Connection of the L-shaped part to the S-shaped part with a lot of silicone kit. Hard to reach area, so I just used an abundance of kit.

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Water tight seal between the snorkel and the connective part that goes through the chassis.

Water tight seal between the snorkel and the connective part that goes through the chassis.

Water tight seal connection to the filter box

Water tight seal connection to the filter box

The final look.

The final look.

On top I fitted what is called a cyclone filter. It filters out dust particles by creating a vortex, much like those vacuum cleaners without a filter.

Brutus is slowly becoming more brutal!

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