Offroad-Express

I was looking for a snorkel for my Nissan GQ and just could not justify spending $680 for a Safari unit.

After previously installing a couple of Gibson Airflow units and not being overly impressed with the finish I decided to try a Force Superwader from 4wdbits.

At $340 they are about the cheapest molded unit you can buy.

Below are photo's of my install as well as comments on the snorkel itself including finish etc.

This review is in no way a reflection on the guys at 4wdbits, although I had a few issues as you will see I did not go back to 4wdbits to give them the opportunity to fix things so treat this as a review on the snorkel kit only.

Well first up here is the vehicle. Yes I know the bumper looks funny, I have just installed a 40mm bodylift.




And here is the snorkel kit. Notice anything missing?? INSTRUCTIONS MAYBE???

The kit is pretty much a rip off of the Safari snorkels, even the logo looks similar. The finish is quite shiny but in my opinion better than the Gibson Airflow units which I found to be finely pitted in places.

OK here is another part of the kit which I did not end up using. As you can see by the bolt pattern I suspect it was designed to fit the three existing bolt holes on the side of the engine bay, however they don't actually line up so if you wanted to use it you would need to drill new holes.

It is also hard to figure out what all of the bits were for. I think you could probably use the kit to either keep the pre-filter or remove it which is what I chose to do.



OK here you can see the pre-filter and two of the holes I mentioned that the triangular piece was supposed to fit.



And here is the pic of the pre-filter removed, you can see the three bolt holes now in the triangular pattern.

Now onto the tricky part. WHERE to place the template. Given that there are no instructions and the template does not extend across the whole guard from front to back you have to guess where it actually goes.

I did this by holding the snorkel up against the guard and sticking the template in place.

As it happened I had it about 1 inch to high as you will see later but without any instructions or a better template it is impossible to know where it should really go.

Template in place:




I then proceeded to use a jigsaw to cut out the large hole and a step drill to drill the bolt holes. As an aside I purchased the step drill today and it is probably the best $100 I have spent on tools. I purchased a fairly good quality unit, drills from 2mm to 30mm in 2mm increments. Went through the panel like a hot knife through butter.

You can also see I used masking tape to protect the panel and then sprayed the drilled/cut areas with rust kill.



Now with the snorkel in place the lack of any instructions or a decent template becomes apparent.

You can see from this shot that the snorkel is supposed to sit about 20mm lower to fit the contour of the panel.

Now you can see from this shot that when I placed the template I assumed the snorkel would sit flush with the top edge of the guard, now I know better.

The problem is that until you drill the holes you cannot sit the snorkel flush against the panel due to the outlet sitting about 25mm proud of the inner side of the snorkel.



As you can see from this shot the snorkel sits nice and tight against the top edge of the guard.



Here is the pic of the piece of flexi coming in to the engine bay.

Joining the flexi pipe onto the snorkel itself inside the guard was fine. The snorkel is quite hard so you can clamp down on the flexi pipe quite hard.

Inside the engine bay though it is another story.

The length of the piece of flexi pipe fits perfectly from the snorkel to the factory pipe going into the air cleaner. Problem is though is that they are both about the same diameter and both are not firm enough to clamp down on.

Looks like I will have to get a short length of pipe to place inside both to clamp down onto.




Here is another shot showing the join between flexi pipe and factory inlet.

Here is the shot of the bracket for the upper piece where it connects to the A-pillar.

I had to rebend the bracket with a BFH to make it fit but was satisfied with the final result.



And finally the finished product.



Final thoughts:

As one of the cheapest kits around you have to expect compromises. What is really frustrating though is it could be so much better if they only provided instructions or a better template.

The only real citicism I have of the kit is where I ended up placing the snorkel due to this.

The snorkel sits nice and tight against the guard, finish is reasonably good and it feels quite solid in place.

Other than having to sort out a piece of pipe for the inside I'm sure it would be water tight out of the box.

Would I buy one again??

Yes I would. But I would not recommend this kit to someone unless you had installed snorkels before or were reasonably handy with the plumbing side of things

search is your friend.............

http://www.offroadexpress.co.nz/Forums/ ... 50&start=0

I think I did a thread on the install on my 80 of this brand

ran into all the same issues as you and some

but mine is in the correct location only due to the fact that I managed to get hold a template for a safari brand snorkel

i noticed you removed the water trap i thought better to keep mine in

nuts wrote:i noticed you removed the water trap i thought better to keep mine in

I thought about it but that means another couple of joins. If the unit is properly sealed you shouldn't be getting any water down there anyway.

marmel wrote:

nuts wrote:i noticed you removed the water trap i thought better to keep mine in

I thought about it but that means another couple of joins. If the unit is properly sealed you shouldn't be getting any water down there anyway.

Dont you believe it! I fitted a Airflow Snorkel to my GQ, Yes its water tight, checked my airfilter other day and it was muddy just were the air enters the airbox, obviously sucks too well and Rain gets all the way down,truck had no prefilter when I got it otherwise would have left it in there,my 2c

so pipe still wins? i know these obviously look a bit more pleasing. But 340 on a snorkel??!!? 50 sounds more like it for something that can quite eaily get smashed off. just my thoughts

Nuts, those water traps have a small drain hole at the bottom, have been known to suck water into them and hydarulic motors.
Al

How many vehicles actually have water traps anyway? I'm sure if there was a problem with water being sucked in through snorkel's you would hear more about it.

I can't remember seeing any threads anywhere about someone's 4wd going bang due to water ingress when a snorkel was fitted.

chevrolux wrote:so pipe still wins? i know these obviously look a bit more pleasing. But 340 on a snorkel??!!? 50 sounds more like it for something that can quite eaily get smashed off. just my thoughts

I thought about going the PVC route but just couldn't face having drainpipe on the side of a daily driver. (Got to keep the wife happy as well).

She complains that having mud tyres makes it look silly so if I had a PVC snorkel she wouldn't even get in.

chevrolux wrote:so pipe still wins? i know these obviously look a bit more pleasing. But 340 on a snorkel??!!? 50 sounds more like it for something that can quite eaily get smashed off. just my thoughts

cause pvc looks like shit no matter how its done

That appears to have a reasonably small m3 of air flow capacity for a 6 cylinder diesel. I assume the thing still runs the same and fuel economy is the same or better than before?

I am personally not a fan of nay snorkel hanging on the out side of the gaurd, (just don't like the look of them, and they get in the way of side bars or exo, and they can also cause reasonable damage to panels etc when leant up against banks etc). But I am definitely in the minority with that choice. I take a lot of effort to make a free flow snorkel fit behind the guard.

Have to admit that the pricing seems very good on these though, and any snorkel is better than nothing at all.

I wouldn't have any doubts there would be enough airflow. This model of snorkel (Force & Safari) is fitted to thousands of GQ's and others so I'm sure if it caused airflow restrictions we would know about it by now.

I suspect the air flow going through the air filter would be a lot more restictive than any snorkel.

looks like its based on the older safari style.....