Reviews: Rugged Ridge Modular XHD Snorkel Kit - 17756.21

This is a great product. I am very pleased with how it functions and how it looks. I have some recommendations, however. 1) Don't bother with the 6"x6" silicon elbow that Rugged Ridge provides to connect the new air filter box to the front of their hard pipe that goes behind the shock absorber. Their elbow barely reaches. It kept slipping off the front of the hard pipe when I was tightening the hose clamp, so I finally had to sink a screw through the hose clamp to keep it on so I could driveI the Jeep while I was waiting for a longer elbow to arrive .... I strongly suggest you consider buying a long leg 3" elbow, like this one from intakehoses.com: Silicone Elbow 3" ID X 90 Degree - Gloss Black - One Long Leg 90B-300X6X11. You'll have to cut about 2-3/4 to 3 inches off the long leg, but this will give you plenty to work with and allow you to double hose clamp it. I also suggest you do not cut the vertical leg to the air filter box. You're going to want the new air filter box to sit as high as it can to line up with the engine intake. (see below) 2) Buy at least two more 3" hose clamps than RR provides, and use two wherever you can fit them, especially on the hard pipe. 3) I wish Rugged Ridge would have used carriage bolts in their air filter box to bolt to the mounts. It is a huge pain to fit and adjust the position of the air filter box having to take it apart every time you want to get to the heads of those bolts, and then reseal them. I didn't retrofit this, but I wish I had. 4) You're probably going to have to cut away some of your wheel well liner behind the front wheel for the air intake pipe and the riser inside the fender to line up. Otherwise, you may get some tire rubbing with the wheel well liner pushed out. The cut will be a nice clean rectangle shape (picture attached) to allow for the three inch pipe to be where it wants to be without distorting the wheel well liner, but it takes some planning to figure out where to cut. I'm going to pop rivet some soft gasket material over it, but it looks fine exposed, too. 5) Buy 1-1/2 feet of 1/2" tubular adhesive weather stripping to fill the gap on the back side of the snorkel mount just in front of the windshield. Otherwise, this gap will collect leaves, and the fit up looks a lot cleaner with the gap filled. (picture attached) 6) If you ever wanted to do a dual battery system, do these two jobs together! I can't even imagine installing the snorkel piping with the OEM battery box in the way. Having all that cleared out seemed essential. If you do this, I suggest you do not bother cutting the air filter box mount off the OEM battery box and salvaging that to mount your new Rugged Ridge air filter box (like Genesis recommends). The Rugged Ridge air filter box sits too low on the OEM air box mounts to line up optimally with the engine air intake. Toss the whole battery box away, and make your own air box mounts out of some 1x1/8 aluminum flat bar (a three-foot length is more than enough). Use one short piece under the air filter box mainly to serve as a washer bar for the air filter box mounting bolts, and then two more bars attached to those bolts and bent upwards around the air filter box towards the fender. I made one of my mounts in two pieces to make it easier to fit, and I should have done this with both of them. On the two-piece mount, one piece was a bar bent up from the bottom of the air filter box, and the other was a bar bent downward from the OEM fender bolt to secure it. I overlapped the two pieces where they needed to be and clamped them and then pop riveted the overlap. (I put a bolt in it first, but just the rivets would have been fine.) Making it two pieces and then riveting them together meant my bends didn't have to be perfect. Splicing the two pieces of flat bar together to where they needed to be gave a perfect overall length on the bracket. This sounds like a lot of work, but seriously, I spent less time making these mounts than I did cutting the battery box apart like Genesis recommended, only to find that the mount was too low anyway. If you do use the OEM air filter box mount that’s part of the OEM battery box, the Rugged Ridge air filter box may sit too low for optimal alignment with the engine intake, so you might have to shim up the air filter box underneath, which may take longer bolts. 7) Especially if you go with your own air filter box mount, just before you're ready to install the air filter box, check out where it will go, and then take this opportunity before you put it in to clean up any wiring you might have run to a front winch or lights. I totally re-ran my front bumper wiring and everything looks much cleaner and is more secure and nowhere near pulleys, belts and pinch points, which was only possible because of the access I had to this area with the air intake out of the way. 8) Two more suggestion for the good folks at Rugged Ridge. I suggest making the male intake fitting on the bottom of the air filter box an inch longer so you can double hose clamp the elbow. 9) And, please, please ,redesign your air filter box to work with spring clips like the OEM air filter box. Your makeshift screw clamps are definitely the lowest grade pieces in this whole kit, and they are a nuisance, even with all the extra space I created with my own mounts. I'm dreading my next air filter change. After all this, I am delighted with my new Rugged Ridge XHD snorkel on my 2017 JKU.

This thing is awesome. Ordered it on Sunday and got it Thursday with standard free shipping. Instructions were very detailed and well thought out with good pictures (for the most part). Took a while to instal so make sure you set a side a whole day to do it or you will be working on it till 2:30 AM. This thing looks awesome and beleive it or not I actually gained about 2 mpg. Haven't tested the watertight integrity yet but with the amount of RTV and rubber and hose clamps on this I feel like the Jeep will float before it becomes hydrolocked.

Do not attempt to install this snorkel kit unless you are advanced, creative, patient and have an extra set of hands available. The process took about 6 hours to install. You will require some extra tools that you may not have in in your tool box. You will also have to buy extra items to complete the install successfully. Sealant, Super Glue, Self Tapping Screws, Black Satin Spray Paint, Factory touch up paint and painters tape. You will need to be creative on the install to get the body lines correct. I had the hardest time getting the cowl properly aligned with the hood. Also plan on spending time on beating on your exhaust heat shield with a hammer. You will not successfully install without hammering on it. I had to buy some piping straps to tie down the intake tube for proper body line fitment. Overall the look is amazing and hopefully it functions as expected.