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Article published with permission of Ettienne Myburgh
We are on our way to Moremi at the end of June and I have been thinking about installing a snorkel. I have had so much conflicting advice and got some quotes. Basically the lowest quote was about R3750 for a Safari snorkel fully installed.
I saw a company importing snorkels from China at R1990. Have a look at www.4x4direct.co.za. I phones Duwayne and he was very helpful, ordering a snorkel for my Patrol on Saturday, getting back to me on Monday to tell me that it will be available that afternoon. I picked it up from him in Stellenbosch.
I have a Nissan Patrol GL 4.8l petrol manual 1996. Asking about someone to install my newly acquired snorkel, I got a quote for R900. I decided to give it a go myself.
Unpacking:
The kit comes with all the parts and a template for cutting the hole in your fender. No installation manual is available. I looked at the website of the manufacturer and the local supplier with no luck.
A Report on Patrol.com helped a lot.
I couldn't wait for Saturday morning to buy a hole saw and got started.
I checked and rechecked the position of the snorkel with the template stuck in position.
Next I removed the cover on the inside of the fender (Red Arrow)
The plastic studs (Green arrow) are known to break when removing them, but I managed to save 4 and break only one
On the engine side of the cavity, the two air vents for the diffs are visible - you have the option of connecting tubing to run these into the snorkel if you wish, I did not.
The electric antenna is located to the back (Blue arrow)
This bolt holding it (Orange arrow) needs to be undone. The silver ring holding the aerial on the upper part of the fender needs to be unscrewed to allow the aerial to be swung down into the fender cavity. You can do your cuts and drilling but to tighten the bolts in the end, the aerial needs to be out of the way.
After marking the position of the hole to be cut on the fender, I stuck masking tape and punched the centre hole for drilling a pilot hole.
I first drilled a 4mm hole followed by a 8mm hole. Then I used an electric jig saw with a steel cutting blade to cute the circle. Once the circle was cut, I used a file to smooth it out. I checked the position again and used the template to mark the position of the three holes for the bolts to go through. Once the holes were marked I checked it again with the snorkel in position. Then I used a double layer of masking tape and drilled 4mm pilot holes followed by 8.5mm hole.
All the edges were coated with two layers of Hammerite paint. I was advised that I could also use any metal primer.
With the snorkel in position, the three holes in the front pillar could be marked and drilled. Again starting with a double layer of masking tape, followed by a 4mm pilot hole and then a 6.5mm hole.
 
This allowed the fitting of the three plastic studs provided once the Hammerite was applied and cured.
The next step was to get the connection to the air filter set up.
To get acces to the air intake opening, you need to remove the air intake tubes before the filter (Green arrows). You need to remove the screws indicated by the yellow arrows and disconnect the tube attached to the air intake (Blue arrow)
As soon as the shops opend this morning, I went out an bought a 95mm Bi Metal Hole saw. You can probably get awau with a 90mm as my final hole was a bit too big.
Drilling/cutting should be at a constand low speed. The plate to be cut is not flat but the air intake hole gave very good support to the hole saw. Just keep going. The cut surface was again treated with Hammerite.
The piece fitting through this hole fitts well as long as the one screw holding the water bottel just in front of it, has been removed.
The template shows two diagrams, the lower right fitting on the snorkel's and the top right diagram seeming to correspond to the origeonal air intake duct. I did not use these.
By Ettienne Myburgh
If you would like to buy a snorkel for a GU Patrol, click here
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