Oh, believe me, I wasn't calling you out. I've heard the anecdotal stuff too but nobody ever seems to post up hard evidence. I definitely want a snorkel, but I'd like to have a realistic idea of what it will do to my stock motor. I don't think I've read a single post (from someone who has a snorkel) saying they felt any noticeable power loss. Your example is interesting but it doesn't account for the fact that a motor should run better when it is drawing in cold air as opposed to hot air from the engine bay. I wonder if that fact negates any negligible loss in airflow (again, for the stock motor). Also, I know the butt dyno isn't exact, but one would think at least a few people who actually run snorkels would have commented on the power loss if it is really an issue.

 

I doubt if a snorkel would hinder performance. So long as the design doesn't restrict the amount of cfm of air coming in vs a stock intake, the length of the tubing will have zero effect.

Even if a snorkel reduces cfm of intake air, that will only really affect performance at a stop light. Once you're moving the ram air affect should compensate for it, even if you're crawling. That's my thinking anyways, feel free to shoot it down if it's way out of whack.

 

By golly, we're not the first folks to ask about this. If you search "snorkel performance" you end up with about 100 threads, but here's one that asks the question directly.

You can read it, but the overall impression seems to be a snorkel modestly improves on stock performance, much like a standard CAI. There's one poster who had a CAI prior to installing his snorkel, and his view was that the snorkel "does not have the same jump as the CAI but it's very close."

 

I remember that thread and, like I said, there doesn't seem to be any butt dyno evidence that the snorkel decreases stock performance and I have yet to see someone post up hard numbers.

 

Think of your intake as a path of least resistance. It takes a lot more suction to drink water from a really long straw versus a short one. Same theory with a snorkel.

The engine operates more freely with less restriction on the intake as well as exhaust, however there is a fine line with being too free.

On a higher horsepower engine it will be more forgiving than a lower output.

With a snorkeled having more scavenging effect on a supercharger I can't say if its a percentage thing or an exponential thing. Ask the guys from RIPP.

becareful buying any programmer for the 2011 and assuming it will work. The guys at superchips say the computer is a whole new setup by Bosch, so a programmer may not work at all until they get the flash.

I was advised to not even buy one until the flash is released for the 2011.

 

I don't think a snorkel has any ram air effect at all. The immediate 90° angle buffets wind from being pressed down the tube.

I would think of a snorkel more like PSI not CFM, you need that forced effect to pack the air in, forced injection. Where a snorkel probapby slows the air down having a lower cfm at the throttle body intake.

I wonder if a solution to this would be to have multiple smaller diameter tubes in the intake to keep the CFMs higher. Like a lawn blower where a nozzle at the end gives greater force.

 

Does anyone actually have any proof (actual before and after dyno results) of any of these things (CAI, exhaust, programmers, etc) actually adding any power?

Reason I ask:

I went wheeling with some engineers this past weekend who also road race. We started talking about aftermarket bolt-ons and whether or not they did any good. With the vast engineering resources available to automotive companies, it would seem they wouldn't leave easy horsepower/ fuel mileage on the table. There has to be some compromise - noise and reliability being the two obvious ones. The last modified car I had was a Lotus Elise and it was generally accepted (and dyno proven) that aftermarket air filters and exhaust added nothing but noise and a blower was the only thing that added any power.

 

My thought is that if in the aftermarket industry if you don't display performance gains (a selling point) then there isn't any.

I used to work for Borla and back in the early 2000's they had a kit for the vette. It offered zero HP gains, while the dual exhaust kit for the V6 mustang gave it 27 HP (rear wheel gains). So obviously that's a sales killer for the vette. Obviously the vette has more engineering than the stang.

Maybe its the same with all these products. The performance is so nominal and varies between applications that nobody wants to post the numbers