Sooty for President!!

I just called ARB USA to see if I could pry any more info out of them. And I did! A bit.

Spoke with a really friendly customer service rep who said that plan is for the Aussies will be back in March for a test fitting.

Should things go well at that point, he anticipated that it would be ready for retail sometime this Summer.

So, just a bit more breath holding?

Good news!

Looks like its progressing.

Can't decide if I even still want one at this point. After 4 years I've only had a handful of times where I wished I had one. Guess I'll decide when I see the final product.

Seem that ARB is really stepping behind the 5th Gen now that the FJ Cruiser is discontinued in the U.S.. I'm really glad I held off on buying a snorkel till now.

In the same vein as the snorkel, I've heard rumblings of a redesigned bumper for the 2014(+) trucks.

That would be rad. I like ARB bumpers in general, but not the current 2014+ one...

Hahaha, someone gave me negative rep for this post ^^^^^ about the FTS snorkel. Doesn't take a genius to guess who it probably was.

here's some + rep to balance it all out.

Thanks, but it's honestly not something I pay attention to. Just happened to notice when I went to the User CP to manage my thread subscriptions and thought it was pretty funny.

I know it's not something that's given much attention on this board but since someone felt it was worth dinging you, why not give you a little back.

After cutting away pretty much all of my inner fender I was thinking of doing a fender "snorkel" mod. This is considering the intake hole is in the front and running down fast dirt roads with no fender to block dust is just going to clog things up. Not to mention when it rains and potential mist going in. So I am subscribing in hopes tis snorkel comes about.

Well that's cool, the wife isn't going to be excited when I cut a hole in my fender, haha. Sub'd

So after spending about 20 minutes on the phone with the Safari brand rep at ARB in Renton, I have a few more details regarding the 5th Gen Snorkel.

As mentioned above, Safari will be sending a rep over from AUS. During that time, they will be doing a few test fittings. These include an "off tool" fitment of the 2nd Gen Tacoma snorkel, a 3D model fitment of the 4th Gen 4Runner snorkel, and a 3D model fitment of the 5th Gen Snorkel.

To put that in a little bit of perspective, back in November of 2014, the snorkel on the 2nd Gen Tacoma was the original fitment of the 3D model. They have since made the tooling for the Tacoma snorkel and wil be doing the original fitment during the mid-March visit to ARB USA.

His prediction was the 5th Gen Snorkel will not take as long as the Tacoma snorkel to tool and get into production. He said there have been delays in the Tacoma snorkel, to include the fact a lot of Australia companies shut down in December for their summer months (according to him).

With that info, as long as there are not any major hiccups in the design and tooling, we could very well see the final product by this Summer. I will be calling them back after the March visit to get his opinion on how the 3D model fitment went.

Regardless, this is definitely coming, so I am excited. I will be waiting for the Safari snorkel because I feel it is a superior product. I have run a Safari snorkel on my 98 Tacoma for the past 10 years and it looks brand new. Another cool tidbit he mentioned is that the snorkel body could be run over by your vehicle and it will not collapse. Can't say that about the fiberglass models.

Hope these details help everyone out.

Jason

Edit: For futher clarification, a 3D model is produced by taking 3D scans of the fender, windshield, and inside the engine compartment. In addition, they perform flow tests on the intake to ensure the Safari snorkel is not reducing the factory air flow in any way. Once the 3D model is made up, it has to be test fitted. After the 3D model is test fitted and additional air flow tests are performed, they make the necessary changes and create the tooling. That is when they produce the off tool design and test fit it. If everything is good to go, they begin producing the final product.

Any update here?

Another thread touched on this and it was thought August I believe...