Discovery 2 - Fitting a Safari Snorkel

I fitted a snorkel to my car to help provide the engine with cleaner air when travelling on unsealed roads and other tracks. As air is taken from much higher up it is much cleaner than the air taken from the factory inlet which is located under the front wheel arch.

A Safari snorkel was chosen as I had already fitted one to my Discovery 1 and the quality was excellent and the instructions were very clear. The tasks to fit a Safari Snorkel are very straight forward.

To fit a snorkel you must cut some very large holes in your front wing.  This is certainly a job where measuring twice and cutting once really pays off. Below are shown the steps that I performed to fit a snorkel to my own car. This document is not intended to be a guide. If you are fitting one to your own car, follow the instructions that came with your snorkel and perform the work at your own risk.

Before I did anything, I read the instructions thoroughly and looked on YouTube for videos on how others had fitted their own snorkels. Once I was confident with what needed to be done, I set about the installation.

The snorkel fits on the left-hand side of the car when sat in it facing forward. In civilised countries, this is known as the passenger side.

I don’t know what it is but whenever I see a four-wheel drive of any make a model without a snorkel, I always feel like there is something missing. Snorkels really do make a big difference in the amount of dust and debris that make it through to your air filter. I have also a centrifugal pre-cleaner that reduces this amount of dust even more.

The first thing that I did was cover the front wing area where the snorkel will be fitted with masking tape. This allowed me to mark out where the holes will be made without directly drawing on the car itself.

It is very hard to make out in the picture as the cream coloured masking tape is hard to see against the white paint of the Land Rover. Take my word for it, there is some tape there

To make access to the wing and engine bay a little easier, the rear wheels were chocked, the center diff lock was engaged and the front passenger side of the car was jacked up and the car supported by axle stands. The passenger side front wheel was then removed.

The smaller holes were made by using a regular drill bit of the correct size outlines by the instructions.

The large hole was made by making two holes at either ends of the markings with a correct sized hole saw. The straight cuts were made to join the top and bottom of the large holes to create one big elongated hole where the snorkel passes through the outer wing panel. I used a Dremmel and a lot of cutting disks to make these straight cuts.

This is also the time where you must do a lot of measuring and cut the hole in the inner wing as per the instructions.

This was so intense I didn’t take any photos.

When all the holes were cut, I removed the plastic inner wheel arch guard and put the snorkel’s intake and all the bolts through the holes in the wing. By removing the inner wing guard, you are easily able to access the bolts on the snorkel to fix it to the car with the supplied nylock nuts.

The top of the snorkel is fixed in place with three bolts that fit into the snorkel and four rivets that need to be drilled and fitted through the bracket into the ‘A’ Pillar.

In the engine bay, the air filter box is modified as detailed in the instructions and the snorkel fittings are installed using lots of sensor safe silicone gel to make a waterproof seal. If water cannot get in here, then dust certainly will not be able to.

All the guards and wheels and everything that was removed were all refitted at this point.

I don’t know if it is necessary but I did not drive my car for a day or so to give all the silicone a good chance to dry properly.

As well as performing the job of reducing the amount of dust making it through to your air filter, I also think that a snorkel makes any 4×4 look a little better to.

Before

After