Snorkle Help

Slightly different snorkle query.About 12mths ago I made my own snorkle sort of, for my 300tdi auto.

Its basicaly a south down top and wing mount with some solid pipe from work of the correct size. I also used solid tubing to run down the inside of the wing and only used a small amount of the flexi pipe for the bend coming into the wing and for the 180 back into the car and onto the air box.

About 1 month ago I started having issues with the car not running right and after lots of cash thrown at it and time and garages wrongly diagnosing the problem, today I have found its the snorkle. Disconect goes as well as a landy can, reconnect runs like crap.

So the question is after inspecting my snorkle, how can a pretty much solid piece of pipe with no apparent blockages that has caused no problems for over a year suddenly cause the car to run poorly?

Someone else had an issue like this where their snorkel was restricting power, cant remember who it was though.

Is the flexi pipe collapsing?
Does the pickup ram have a water separator built in?
Does the pickup have any sort of membrane in it?

The pipe shouldn't be collapsing there not much of it and its a good quality wired ducting.

Don't know its a standard Southdown

No

Oh and Ive seen the other thread and it turned out to be the inter cooler top hose and mine is fine.

It coupd be bottom intercooler pipe crushing.

I might be wrong but the pipes after the turbo should be under pressure so shouldn't collapse.

Not really sure why people are suggesting intercooler pipes when the OP said the disco if fine ,and drives as good as a disco should with the snorkle disconnected .

So its got to be snorkle , the weakest link is the flexi joints , or a blockage of sorts .
Ive heard of problems with snorkles connected to airflow sensors on the edc and v8's ,not getting enough air

Try removing the top portion (if it has a filter in it) and run it for a little bit ,see if that helps ?

I had a similar problem with mine, I used a south down wing moulding and top and made the rest myself. My problem was where I used a sealant at the joins it had made the internal diameter smaller when the parts were pushed together and reduced the airflow enough to cause the problem.

I too replaced the turbo hoses with silicone ones before finding out the problem.

It was me with the same problem, took me an age to work out what it was, i too thought it was pipes collapsing....

I found out it was the after market filter not performing, as these engines need a lot of air.

In the end i put in a 200 air box as that was easier to plumb in the snorkel and never had any issues since.

Before....




After.....

I have a standard air box on mine already but I have had a thought that it may just be the air filter. Its not old but the snorkle does tend to hoover up loads of crap like dead flies and leaves.

Mine was an odd one, if i disconnected the snorkel from the air filter, all was good, which made me think the piping was to blame, but i guess the snorkel restricts a bit of the air flow so the air box/filter needs to be spot on to work in harmony.

Could try running it without a filter to see if there is any difference or just change the filter as they aren't much?

yep mine is the same as yours was fine with the snorkle disconnected suddenly rubbish with it connected.

I will be ****ed of with myself for some of the parts I've bought if its just the air filter.

Been there done that!

Changed all the intercooler pipes from silicone to steel, changed the mushroom snorkel top to the ram type....striped the wing down to check piping too many times to mention....drove me mad.

But made all the difference with the new air box, a different car almost.

There you go, I knew it was someone on here. As said, try removing the southdown ram and see if it still does it.

It may sound silly, but if you think about when you drive along with the window open a crack, especially if your a smoker, the smoke gets drawn out of the car.
Its the same for snorkels, if they are not positioned correctly, you can create a condition where the air is trying to be drawn out of it, rather than forced down it. And at speed that can cause power loss.

Diesels run with excess air as standard with a very wide AFR.

My previous edc auto started to drink diesel, no real noticeable power loss. Got to the point where I was looking for holes in the fuel tank!

Turned out to be one of these sport air filters fitted by the previous owner, the ones laced with a thin oil to catch debris, that was just chock fill of rubbish and flys and dust etc. I hate those types of filter.

At least a dry std factory filter allows the dust and rubbish to fall back into the air box.

StuRox said:

Before....

After.....

Click to expand...

This is the exact setup i coppied ( hope you didnt mind !) and it works superb
and you can buy the 200tdi filters easily .

Also there has been lots of research on airfilters and its proven that a standard panel filter lets the engine have more air than a k&n reusable filter

Festerer said:

This is the exact setup i coppied ( hope you didnt mind !) and it works superb
and you can buy the 200tdi filters easily .

Also there has been lots of research on airfilters and its proven that a standard panel filter lets the engine have more air than a k&n reusable filter

Click to expand...

I work in the trade selling car parts. A panel filter from some of the big brands costs about £21.00 inc vat at staff price and needs cleaning every other month with a bit of green laneing etc. It also needs re oiling with a kit that costs £11.99 and lasts for 5 cleans. Otherwise I loose a fair bit of mpg and a bit of bottom end grunt.

A STD paper replacement panel filter costs me £2.90 inc vat. Needs changing every 6 months at worst as it doesnt hold large debris like the aftermarket one does. I can by 7 of these for the price of the aftermarket filter alone!

Even if you don't have that level of discount off retail, it still works out cheaper!

A test by a tuning company on a seat ibiza with a 1.9 pd tdi engine with 150bhp std found the following:

Std filter in std air box - Std makers bhp/torque quote.

No filter in std air box - No gain

Aftermarket filter in std air box - No gain

Aftermarket cone filter - Bhp/torque loss

No air box or filter - Bhp/torque loss

Std airbox/std filter with modified/improved ram effect cold air feed to box - Bhp/torque gain. Customer commented afterwards on slight mpg improvment.

The car was then mapped and went through the same tests, again the std air box and filter with better cold feed came out on top as the best option!

Festerer said:

This is the exact setup i coppied ( hope you didnt mind !) and it works superb
and you can buy the 200tdi filters easily .

Also there has been lots of research on airfilters and its proven that a standard panel filter lets the engine have more air than a k&n reusable filter

Click to expand...

Not a problem at all. That's what the forum is all about, helping people......oh and taking the pi$$ out of people too