I was thinking about purchasing a K&N CAI, but then I came across a snorkel, and I was wondering which one is better to have installed on your JK? Is it possible to have both? Would it add on to your performance gains? If anyone could help me make a decision that would be helpful. By the way I live in the city, and don't plain on doing any driving through pools of water any time soon.

 

It doesn't require deep water to hydrolock a JK. I've seen it happen. Neither one will give you much in the way of performance or milage gains.

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If you think about it they are kind of the same thing.snorkel pulls in cooler air from outside of the engine compartment while the basic CAI does it from the inside. I wondered the same thing but after much thought I concluded that the position of the intake leaves the JK vulnerable to hydrolock. So I got a snorkel. Cooler air and safer.

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for your purpose a CAI will be fine, your not gonna see any real performance gains with a snorkel (at least over a CAI) as you will be pulling the air a longer distance to the throttle body. even with water crossing its gotta be pretty deep to really need a snorkel, deep enough to get you wet lol. though dont get me wrong my rig will eventually have a snorkel but thats cause i plan to hit deep-ish water

 

From the sound of it, you are looking for performance gains... A snorkel will do you no good in the city. A CAI will not cool the air charge enough on the JK to produce noticeable gains; in fact you may lose MPG due to heat saturation in the engine bay.

Re-gear, buy a flashpaq or Supercharge it.

Dont waste your money.

 

If it's cold air you are looking for, it has to come from outside the engine bay.

I installed a mechanical fan and shroud on the engine to improve engine and transmission cooling. It does a good job but it also lowered the temp of everything under the hood, including the intake air temperature, especially when going slow on the trail and in the city.
No noticeable performance gains or losses. Just the long term benefit of having everything a lot cooler under the hood.

https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/modi...trofit-235132/

 

Snorkel.... As already stated, they essentially do the same thing. But, if you forgo the factory intake and fun a custom snorkel -- snorkel as direct connect to intake, then you technically have a hybrid.

 

Got my supercharger+snorkel combo. Love it and im glad i got it. Decent crossing on my last trip that surprised the whole crew. Mud and water up to my doors and you had to move quickly to keep your momentum going. Found mud and water high up in my engine bay. Without the snorkel my supercharger would of no doubt sucked up some water.

 

Not personally a big fan of CAIs on Jeeps, but for those who want the "best" of both worlds, here's one possibility that will work on some JKs (you didn't provide us any information about yours, either in your question or your profile--you'll get better answers if you do) ...

http://www.rippmods.com/shop/2007-2011-jeep-wrangler-ripp-cold-air-kit-for-all-snorkels

 

There's a lot of talk about the JK intake being vulnerable to water ingestion but with some common sense you can typically avoid that downfall. I've been through 40" of standing water without sucking it into my factory air box. Sure, a snorkel would have been better, but I didn't have one and don't intend on buying one. The CAI's are more for looks since (as pointed out) they all pull air in from the engine bay- albeit typically isolated. Go look on the track how to do a proper cold air intake- remove a headlight and run ductwork straight to the throttle body. That's obviously not a practical solution for our application, but it is a true cold air intake.