Everglades Snorkel plates

[husker73]

So I swapped the solid back plate to the front of my snorkel and the grill plate to the back. Is anyone having an issue with them now seating flat and bowing out in the middle? Also It would be nice if there were some billet aluminum ones to replace the factory plastic ones.

Brian

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[Ninjak]

I believe someone on the forum makes a billet plate and sells them for the Snorkel on the Everglades.

 

[husker73]

I believe someone on the forum makes a billet plate and sells them for the Snorkel on the Everglades.

I will see if i can find them. thanks

 

[BD6G]

They warp easily unfortunately. There was a guy on eBay that had some milled aluminum grille plates. I am currently working with a company to have both done and get to market. We are still a little bit out on the. But they’re coming. I also saw IAG working on some at Super Cel Tennessee however they are still in the testing phase and I wasn’t given an estimated release date.

 

[husker73]

Cool thanks. i saw the one on ebay. the blank plate looked ok but the grill one, the slots weren't cut even...

Would like to find them in black. I tried warming them up and putting an inward bend in them but the still warped outward.

 

[threebanger]

For $70 for each plate the better f*ucking be titanium. Jesus.

 

[mpd3244]

Yes, ours did the same thing (warped) within a week of purchase. Dealership tried to tell us that we modified it and it wasn't their issue. We literally had to show them that it is made to be reversable.

 

[Charlie553]

Unfortunately it’s not just the plates that are warped, to a degree the whole mounting faces of the snorkel where the plates attach are warped as well. Having nice flat plates out of any material won’t entirely fix this problem.

If you move the slotted plate to the rear side of the snorkel, there are two horizontal braces on the housing that line up perfectly with two of the cross bars in the plate. I used 4 medium small zip ties, one in each corner where these parts matched up and drew the plate in snug with the housing. If you don’t do them up too tightly, you can clip the ends and then rotate the ties around so you don’t even see the clasp portion and you hardly even notice the ties in place. Rear part done.

The forward facing part is a little different as there isn’t any way to use zip ties with the solid plate. In addition to this, the snorkel housing on mine anyway was warped in the middle of the inboard edge close to .375”. I was able to coax about 1/2+ of that warping out by careful use of a heat gun on low and using a short length of small aluminum angle iron clamped in place with 3 Cleco Side clamps on the inside edge of the housing where the plate would match up. Over the coarse of the evening I heated it up about 4 times and then let it fully cool before doing it again. My infrared thermometer read about 170*F before I chickened out each time but it definitely helped and left no damage whatsoever to the snorkel housing. That was part A of fixing the leading edge.

Part B of fixing the front of the snorkel was to make up a whole new solid plate for the front of the snorkel. The existing 5mm thick (approx .200”) solid plate is very soft and just wasn’t going to work no matter how much I tried. I made up a new plate using .250” lightly textured black King Starboard plastic that seems to be working quite well, at least it holds its flat shape better than that poor excuse of a plate supplied by Ford, and the color matches very nicely. Again however, with the snorkel housing itself being warped, I still have about .062” gap in the middle rather than .375” as it was initially, but this is worlds better than it was initially. It does stand slightly more proud from the snorkel as the material is thicker, but after a short while I don’t even notice that any more. I may try to get the remaining warping out another day, but I’m at the point of diminishing returns and there’s probably no need to go totally nuts on it more than I already have.

This may seem like overkill for people in dryer parts of the world, but here in FL where we can basically get monsoon rains, (and too many occasional hurricanes), I wanted to do whatever possible to keep water out of the intake, especially as there are only two small .250+- holes to allow any accumulated water to drain out should any get in there. I think that some kind of duckbill valve or similar in the bottom of the air box will on my project list shortly.

Sorry for the long post but hope it might be of some help to someone anyway.

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