What the heck is that?

BearWithMe · Jul 28, 2019

Subbed. I see a snorkel in my future.

OnHartung'sRoad · Jul 28, 2019

Huh, I guess snorkels come in all different sizes also.

House Forsaken · Jul 29, 2019

upTOPoverland said: ↑

A few months back we were all out running some trails. Couple of water crossings, nothing crazy. Out of the 5-6 trucks we had with us one of them took on water, truck stalled, stranded. We recovered the truck, got it to the river bank. Host of problems became apparent and we started to recover a truck from the end of a trail that ended up taking about 10-12 hours to get it back to civilization for a tow truck. Long story short truck engine blown. Water in intake.

This kind of stuff happens. It is what it is. Sometimes we all go through things that when you look back on them they were sketchy and we could have found another way to get from point A to point B.

My thoughts drifted to different air intake locations and how we could have prevented that from happening to our friend. Can you drive Tacos underwater? No. Of course not. We can all barely go the speed limit and merge into traffic on interstates. All been covered before.

Same as the roof racks we make. I wanted one and I didn't like the look of what was out there. Intake. Needed a snorkel, DAI, elevated air inlet, or whatever name we want to attach to a device that takes the air inlet port from directly above my tire to a higher, less likely to be underwater location on the truck and I didn't like the look of any of the ones readily available. So I made one.

Air flow......basic subwoofer enclosure math. The stock intake hole is XXX size. That equates to an amount of volume...in our case we did the math and calculated the square inches of that opening. The "snorkel/dorkel/DAI/elavated air inlet/upTAKE" keeps that volume of "tube" from the old port hole in the inner fender through the tube that connects to the outer fender and then carries that math up to the inlet at the roof rack. It changes shape from round to not so round for cosmetics once it gets to where you can see it but here are a few reasons why:

1.) It doesn't obstruct my view from the drivers seat. I can still take pictures of mountains, rainbows, big horn sheep, sunrises and sunsets out that side of the truck from the drivers seat and I won't have a Scuba Steve mouth piece in my photos.

2.) I can remove the actual elevated part and run a can filter on the side of the truck if I want to. It's designed to attach with a silicone sleeve and a couple of hose clamps.

3.) I absolutely cannot stand the look of a two foot long piece of black plastic running down my passenger fender. If I wanted a black fender I would have bought a black truck. Got a tan one instead.

4.) The trim ring and grill at the top (grill mesh is classified by percentage of open area) is actually spaced out in front of the intake mouth by .750" allowing unrestricted air intake. The grill is cosmetic and keeps a bird from shooting into the intake at 80mph (downhill, mind to your tailgate) and causing a HUGE feathered mess.

5.) No idea if we will sell, want to sell, care about selling, etc...We are a roof rack manufacturer. That's what we do and we work really hard to do that well. Inevitably something different like this will spark some questions. If we decided to manufacture these we would pick the way that made the most sense and do the proper testing to make sure they work the way we would all want them to work. Probably dyno the truck with and without to make sure there aren't any performance issues because that would just be good practice.

6.) Supercharger on a tacoma. LOL. No.

7.) It's kind of the same thing as most of you guys. I wanted something that fixed a problem that some of us have and there wasn't anything out there that I wanted to spend my money on because I just didn't like the look of any of them. So.......I made it.
Click to expand...

I love it and want one!!! Now just

OnHartung'sRoad · Jul 29, 2019

Doozy4212 said: ↑

FOR EVERYONE HERE, trash talking or not, I will drop some truth bombs.

Micah (@upTOPoverland) and myself have built a fully functional snorkel for the 3rd gen tacoma. This was built 100% by hand from fiberglass. Micah and myself are actually much smarter than some of you think and we did the math to ensure we are not restricting air flow. The stock intake is a 3" hole equal to about 7.07 sq. in. The tube of this snorkel, in addition to the intake head of this snorkel has about 9.27 sq in ALL THE WAY TO THE FACTORY airbox, the restriction is again the stock hole.

This is a first iteration, and we will be refining the design so buckle up....
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Hey, just curious- did you vacuum form it on a blank? It looks well built for handmade fiberglass. Nice job!

upTOPOverland_Drew · Jul 29, 2019

OnHartung'sRoad said: ↑

Hey, just curious- did you vacuum form it on a blank? It looks well built for handmade fiberglass. Nice job!
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Nope, all hand formed and shaped by micah. If we produce they would be vacuum formed

MunchTIME · Aug 1, 2019

What's the cross sectional area on this thing? It really doesn't look large enough to account for friction loss over a long run like that. If it's sized the same as the hole in the fender it's definitely not. Maybe they've already got dyno results to verify?

scifidelity · Aug 1, 2019

CouchlessPotato said: ↑

I can only imagine the issues guys will have with a supercharged 3rd gen after the shit show with the transmission and the engine already a high revving engine
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Hopefully people will get it tuned. Not sure it would even run with a supercharger on the stock tune.

CouchlessPotato · Aug 1, 2019

scifidelity said: ↑

Hopefully people will get it tuned. Not sure it would even run with a supercharger on the stock tune.
Click to expand...

Probably would idle, but die when the rpms are higher

UplandTaco · Aug 1, 2019

I like where this design is going. Every snorkel option on the market is fugly and it's great to see a small company taking the initiative to improve on what the bigger companies can't quite seem to get right. Hope to see some updates soon!

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