The standard air intake of most vehicles pull in a far more concentrated dust factor that a real snorkel does. Theory is, its not just the dust particles in the air directly infront of the intake opening, air hits the front on the vehicle and runs along collecting dust as it goes accumulating and then its funneled into the standard intake port. Imagine you have two buckets, both have a funnel above them, one 2in wide, the other 2ft wide, leave them out in the rain, then measure the differnece in the amount collected, the bucket with the 2ft wide funnel will ofcourse collect more water. Thats how it works with the front of a vehicle, the air inlet is placed at a point of high air pressure, this point unfortunately also is the place all the dust that hits the front of the vehicle is funneled to, thus more dust injested. As well the air pooling at the front is heated, the hotter the air the less dense, and less o2 it has to burn, so less effective in combustion.
A real snorkel is designed to sit up high and away from the vehicle, so any dust slipstreaming along the body of the vehicle keeps doing that , goes by, the intake is out in an undistrubed air flow, yes, there is dust, but only the dust in a 3in square area, not the dust of the area of the front of the vehicle, thus, cleaner, fresher air. Also inside the hat of the snorkel there is another seperation process happening. Sitting up inside the hat, the intake pipe is higher at the front than at the rear, dust and more importantly rain, hits this and in deflected , most goes by the intake and hits the rear of the hat, runs down and is pushed out those little slots you see at the base of the hat. The air ram effect (simply the force of driving the hat forwards) is used to force this cleaned air down the intake pipe into the airbox. A real snorkel is not just a bit of pipe stuck up in the air, and is not just for water forwarding.
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Unless this is what you are really wanting I suggest you dont get one, its not a Looks Mod, far from it, Its a practical real world tool for vehicles. I admit they dont look pretty, and there are plenty of other "snorkel" designs out there that LOOK better, those ones that sit nice and close and conture to the vehicle body, but these too just collect and funnel in dust. The only way to get the cleanest flow of air is with a real snorkel, and I'm glad the KJ wasnt treated like a vehicle that just had a so called snorkel made for it just as something else to buy, but, Airflow actuall went out and made the "Real" thing. From all reports the new Safari snorkel by ARB is also a true snorkel, Not one of their snorkel for "Toyota/Nissan owners who just bought a 4x4 and have to have everything they can possibly have on their new 4x4 so long as it looks good" mods.
