Lenz Snorkel for FJCs (1 Viewer)

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BMThiker

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I've been avoiding snorkels for years. Hated the look of the Safari, saw very little competition or ingenuity in design, and ultimately thought I'd fabricate one myself. That is until I saw this one. It's made by a guy in Israel and he does small batches (currently only FJC and GX470). ACC Garage was going to do a group buy, so I said heck yeah. That looks sleek and not like a clunky piece of roto-molded garbage can plastic. This won't be a step by step install, more of a overview and analysis of the install and product.
LenzDesign-snorkel (1).jpg

It came in an was already prepped for paint. It's made of fiberglass and is skimmed and primed. Mounting hardware is embedded in the fiberglass and the kit consists of the main snorkel, two fiberglass elbow joints and section of corrugated rubber tubing. The parts kit comes with nuts/washers, but I can't remember if I picked up the hose clamps myself or if they came with it. There is also a paperboard template that lines up with the trailing fender edge near the door hinge. The template had some vagueness to it, I did my best to "compromise" somewhere in the middle of all the visual cue lines.
LenzDesign-snorkel (2).JPG

I drilled my holes and did some test fitting. It didn't go very well. The vertical portion seemed to be warped and made the intake section stand off the roof of the truck. It's all supposed to lie flat against the A-pillar and roof. If I made it lie flat against the roof then it pulled away from the fender. Holes had been drilled, I was going to make this work.

I got the internal parts fitted, but required a short section of silicon tube to adapt to the air intake hose. I had a prefilter "dust spinner" installed in here before and the stock intermediate piece was ditched a long time ago. So the silicon tube filled the gap. I slathered on the FIPG and placed the tube clamps.

LenzDesign-snorkel (4).JPG


I opted to run this as a test fit for a bit to see if the fiberglass would be willing to acquiesce over time. So I bolted it to the fender in the 4 provided places, plumbed the tubing and then zip tied the top of the snorkel. This was necessary because the two studs and bracket that normally go on a factory roof or roof rack needed to be redesigned around my Prinsu roof rack arrangement. As you can see, this didn't stop me from taking it out on the trails before it was fully mounted. It got some pinstriping but never took a heavy hit.

LenzDesign-snorkel (5).JPG
 
Fast forward a couple months until this past weekend. I finally decided it was time to take the Prinsu under the knife. The inside edge of the snorkel was clashing with the forward part of the side rail. I traced out my Lenz intake and put the sawzall and body saw to work. Knowing that I wouldn't be able to use the Lenz mounting studs embedded in the inside edge, I lopped those off.

LenzDesign-snorkel (6).JPG

Instead I decided to fabricate my own bracket that would help with the warping in the fiberglass. It did not acquiesce on its own, so coercion was the new tactic. I loosened up the mounting holes in the fender and even wound up drilling them out a bit bigger to give me some maneuverability while coaxing it all to fit nicely against the A-pillar.

LenzDesign-snorkel (7).JPG


I wished I didn't have to take so much of the Prinsu material, but it was necessary to make it lie flat.

LenzDesign-snorkel (8).JPG

Part of what this steel bracket is doing is pushing down on the snorkel, as well as keeping the trailing edge from "flagging away" from the roof line.
LenzDesign-snorkel (9).JPG


Even still, this is temporary. It will all come off so that I can powdercoat the steel bracket and re-prep the snorkel for another coat of primer and Titanium Silver paint. I ended up cracking the first elbow piece that backs up against the fender sheet metal, so it's also being epoxied and reinforced.
LenzDesign-snorkel (11).JPG
 
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Nice work!
 
Love the look. I would be a little concerned about wind noise though. Looks a heck of a lot better than any I have seen.
It does buffet wind against the vent visor unfortunately, which causes the visor oscillate at upper highway speeds. I'm going to stiffen up the vent visor with some clear acrylic applied to the inside surface to reduce vibrations.
 
I've ordered a Lenz Design snorkel for my 2005 Toyota Prado back in september 2019. It arrived broken + the quality wasn't up to my expectations. It felt really cheaply made and I'm convinced I got a product of lesser quality than the ones they show on their website. Anyway, it was broken (see pcitures) so I e-mailed with Albert to send it back and to get my money reimbursed. He agreed.

It was quiet complicated to ship the snorkel back to Israel from Belgium. Finally, on the 11th of february 2020 Evgenia, Albert's assistent, admitted that the snorkel was in Israel. This was after four reminders after the last contact.

Some more correspondence. She needed some bank detials to reimburse me, which I provided on the 27th of february 2020. Since then, I haven't received anything. I've sent 5 reminders... no answer. I've tried mail, Facebook, Instagram... With shipping + costums this broken snorkel, which I don't have anymore, costed me € 450,00 ($ 500,00).

I strongly advise everybody on this forum to not do business with these people. The product is of very poor quality and the customer service is non existent. If 34 e-mails + other messages don't get this issue sorted, I don't know what will.

Albert & Evgenia: you clearly outsmarted me and kept me busy for nearly five months. I hope you enjoy the € 360,00 (price of the actual snorkel) you stole from me and wish you all the best with the business.

Kind regards,
Cedric

Broken_Snorkel_1.jpg


Broken_Snorkel_2.jpg
 
Sorry your experience was not great. You have an odd post history on this forum.
I’m aware that I haven’t posted much yet. I too wish that I could have reported that everything went fine and that this is a good product. Sadly not.

If Albert sorts this out, like he promised, I’ll be the first to report it.

To balance my negative experience; I’ve had great experience with Euro4x4parts and Megastore4x4.
 
I’m aware that I haven’t posted much yet. I too wish that I could have reported that everything went fine and that this is a good product. Sadly not.

If Albert sorts this out, like he promised, I’ll be the first to report it.

To balance my negative experience; I’ve had great experience with Euro4x4parts and Megastore4x4.
There is a special section of this forum for complaints.
 
I've ordered a Lenz Design snorkel for my 2005 Toyota Prado back in september 2019. It arrived broken + the quality wasn't up to my expectations. It felt really cheaply made and I'm convinced I got a product of lesser quality than the ones they show on their website. Anyway, it was broken (see pcitures) so I e-mailed with Albert to send it back and to get my money reimbursed. He agreed.

It was quiet complicated to ship the snorkel back to Israel from Belgium. Finally, on the 11th of february 2020 Evgenia, Albert's assistent, admitted that the snorkel was in Israel. This was after four reminders after the last contact.

Some more correspondence. She needed some bank detials to reimburse me, which I provided on the 27th of february 2020. Since then, I haven't received anything. I've sent 5 reminders... no answer. I've tried mail, Facebook, Instagram... With shipping + costums this broken snorkel, which I don't have anymore, costed me € 450,00 ($ 500,00).

I strongly advise everybody on this forum to not do business with these people. The customer service is non existent. If 34 e-mails + other messages don't get this issue sorted, I don't know what will.

Albert & Evgenia: you clearly outsmarted me and kept me busy for nearly five months. I hope you enjoy the € 360,00 (price of the actual snorkel) you stole from me and wish you all the best with the business.

Kind regards,
Cedric
Update 23 april 2020: I just received my money back. It's not my style to complain out in the open but they left me no choice. I'm still quiet upset that it took over five months but at least they did the right thing.
 

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