Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Inbox :: Message
From: batshiz
To: Toyhatsu
Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2005 6:38 am
Subject: got a part i cant find
looking for a snorkle but cant find one in usa could u help me out there! Probaly dont need one but they look cool!

I received a PM from batshiz and thought that I would post it here. I am not sure whether the piccies I posted before were lost in the server crash or not. The moderators can delete this if they want to.

No one I know of makes a snorkle for the Feroza (US Rocky). I have seen a lot of home made ones on Ferozas and other vehicles. Some were very nice and some not so nice.

I made mine from 3" exhaust parts. One 90* tight radius mandrel bend and two 45* mandrel bends. Also two short lenghts of 3" straight exhaust tubing. The pilar bracket can be fabbed up a number of ways but I used a piece of 1" square tubing. A band clamp, some door edge molding, two one inch plastic hole plugs and a couple of nuts and bolts. Mike H. sent me a Safari snorkle ram (?) or hood from Oz. I noticed that Safari USA sells them also.

Instead of just cutting a round hole through the fender I made a tear drop shaped hole. This allows the tubing to fit closer to the body. I used a 3 1/4" hole saw and it really worried me about cutting into it but... I then used a rather large half round file to make the tear drop. It was a lot of file and fit over and over till I got it right. When I got close I put in the door edge trim and made sure that the fit was tight just using the 90* bend for fitting.

Next came the cutting and welding of the exhaust parts. It would probably help to have someone with you while doing this as it is a little hard to hold the pieces in place to tack weld them. I got it all welded up and decided that I didn't like the way it looked so I cut it all apart and redid it. I still don't like the way that the horizontal piece is...not horizontal. That's where the second person is handy and I didn't have one. Just to tack and step back and see what it looks like.

Anyway the pics of it welded and ground down.

I forgot to mention that the 90* had a flair at one end to slip over another piece of tubing. I cut this off, slotted it and welded it to a piece of 16ga steel plate. This is for the inside of the fender in the engine bay. A band clamp goes around this piece to help hold the tubing in place. I just used silicone seal to glue it to the inside fender. Do this a a final step which I will mention later.

Next I made a template (clear plastic that bends) for where I wanted the 1" holes in the inside of the pillar and the 3/8" holes for the bracket and outside of the pillar. I taped the template on the pillar, center punched the marks and drilled more holes in me poor little truck.

I used the template on the 1" square tube and marked the centers and drilled. I then used a bench grinder to open up the opposite side of the holes. Again I used a large half round file and took my time to fit it to the 3" tubing.

After I was satisfied with the fit I bolted the bracket to the pillar, held the rest of the tubing in place and tack welded the bracket to the tubing, unbolted the assembly and final welded it in place.

I used a piece of rubber cut to fit for a gasket.

The inside holes were a little tricky but I got them approximately right. The one inch palstic hole plugs I got at a hardware store.

I used black silicone seal around the tear drop shaped dooredge trim gasket, siliconed the back of the backing plate of the slotted flange bracket, slid the snorkle in place, bolted the pillar up, pushed on the outside of the tubing to get it close to the body, slid the slotted flange on, pushed it against the inside of the fender in the engine bay and put the band clamp on. I let the silicone set for 24 hours.

I did paint the parts before assembly.

The whole project turned out OK. Not great but OK. It does hug the body fairly well.

I then had to modify the stock filter canister to use my K&N and to fit the engine bay tubing. I don't have pictures of that but if you can get this far you can figure it out.

The snorkle is not currently in use since I did the engine swap. The air intake is on the other side of what it used to be. I do have a plan in the works to route the intake over to the snorkle and use factory Tacoma air filters.

just wanted to say thanks for that! I looked at safari snorkles it looked like they were on the drivers side for either toyota or the rocky but not sure emailed arb and they said they didnt have any thing to fit and i would have to make one! so thanks for the tips on how to do it all! Know to find the time to make one!