I would like to (purchase)put a snorkel on my 914 when I put a six in this yr... what is the difference between metal/ plastic, early/ late, 914-6/911 snorkels
What is needed to get them to fit Webbers... or were they made to fit Zeniths

Even more confusing, some were made to fit MFI

Great question Pete. I'm anxious to hear the experts chime in on this one. A search for "snorkel" turned up a few informative posts, but still not 100% conclusive. Could swear I'd read a post not too long ago that stated certain metal 911 AF housings were too tall. Sure enough one post I found searching looks like there was slight interference with the engine lid using a metal 911 housing, but a few other posts implied mods could correct this. Couldn't find what exactly the "mod" was though, maybe shave a bit of metal from the lid, or maybe take a hammer and beat the crap outa the AF housing. Other posts implied a 911 metal housing would fit fine. Sounds like some 911 snorkels point the wrong direction. In the 914, the snorkel needs to point toward the passenger side. Some snorkels like on some MFI engines had a thermo air valve near the end. Some had a duct for straight hot air from the HEs that may be upside down if used on a 914.

At this point, all I can say with some level of certainty is:
- 914/6 AF housings were plastic.
- The 914/6 housing is flatter than at least some 911 housings (not sure if all or not).
- Some 911s also had plastic housings but slightly different than the 914/6 one.
- There were several different 911 AF housings, but seems like only 1 for a 914/6.
- Early 911 housings for (I think) Zenith carbs are expensive as hell!
- 914/6 snorkels point toward the passenger side.
- Some 911 snorkels will not point the right direction.
- Some 911 snorkels have stuff on the ends for warmup that you don't need on a 914.
- It's been said that factory AF housings may offer better performance than rain hats due to air flow.

Dan

A few years ago I bought webers for my long hood 911 and there was an air cleaner assembly included. The snorkel can be mounted in two positions 180 degrees apart and I discovered that neither position worked, the snorkel collided with the engine lid or the fan ring. I never made the connection that the housing and snorkel were related to a 914-6 and I sold it for a hundred bucks. A year or two later I bought a six conversion and upon reading up on the cars I realized I had a -6 filter assembly. The snorkel was plastic but the mounting flange was metal. I also recall ordering a 911 air filter but discovered it was too long and the snorkel flange wouldn't seat, this lets air in without being filtered.

The 914-6 used weber 40IDTP carbs, not Zenith. Dimensionally the IDTP are the same as IDA, IDS, IDAP etc

The plastic airboxes definitely differ.

Ended up with a 914-6 before I converted to a six, and it fits perfectly under the engine lid. It's a lot quieter than rain hats or other open filters, but it appears to rob a fair bit of power with that 110-hp 914-6 snorkel: My 2.2 "E+" made 169.9 hp at the rear wheels without the air box in place during tuning, and the dyno operator wanted to do one final pull with the air box and snorkel in place, as he expected better power—or, at least, better torque. To our surprise, we lost 20 hp (!) at the wheels. With not much time left, we pulled the 914-6 snorkel and air filter out for one more run before taking the car off the dyno. We gained 12 hp back. I pulled the 914-6 snorkel off and ran a Fabspeed "Cup style" open filter holder…but suspect what I really should be looking for is one of the "cut off" snorkels since I can't bring myself to cut a nice 110-hp snorkel. (My mechanic believes the factory air box may have some pulse issues that rain hats avoid—so independent filters may make better power…but I don't want that much noise.)

Also ended up with another plastic air box recently, purchased mainly for a one-off (?) aluminum Cup-style filter holder. It had no lower buckets, and does not fit onto the buckets that came with the 914-6 air box. So perhaps it's an MFI air box, but that's just a guess.

All right, that's all I've got…here to learn from others!

WOW... 20hp is a LOT of sacrifice for a few decibels...Maybe talking in a 914 is overrated!!
What did you do to your 2.2 "E+" to get that much power?

Not too sure about the Shell decal or the small hose clamps.
The decal is positioned to be read from the oil tank side.....anyone ?
All other details are correct AFAIK
The cold start squirter plumbing was deemed a fire hazard and there was a service
advisory to disable it. It's hard to find the other associated cold start parts.
There are a few snorkel versions for 911s but only the 914 6 snorkel points to the
distributor side.
All air filters for these housings are the same.

more

And a couple of the unique 914-6 parts dealing with the fuel system rgalla9146 mentioned.

On the right the electric cold start valve that was connected to the fuel line and those little hose fittings on the back of the plastic air box....it just opened up and let raw fuel squirt into the box....

And on the left the throttle position switch valve used vacuum off the driver side intake manifold to hold the throttle open on overrun.... early pollution management....that's what connect to the cross bar on that little extra weird fitting on the passenger side.....and those closed off vacuum fittings on the diver side intake


Click to view attachment

Try to get the metal setup if you can. Carbs can backfire causing the plastic to melt or catch fire.

If you score an MFI box, don't use it. Find someone who needs it and sell it. They are worth more than carb boxes.

I read in an old Upfixen that someone did some testing years ago and found that if they cut off the snorkle to a certain diameter it improved performance.

It was something like 2/3rds of the snorkel removed or something like that.

I wouldn't do that these days. Talk about destroying a rare part.

Here you go Steve:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/403425096891?hash=...-QAAOSwEqlh7CMB

I know I just said don't buy plastic, but this is a decent price, snorkel already hacked = done.

Would still need to find the carb bases.

Here's a good example of wasting money on a MFI box:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/403292844338?hash=...4IAAOSwxINhjtln

You don't need the little fire-starting fuel squirters, only the pure MFI folks want those.

When I had the MFI engine in my car, I disabled the fuel squirter. They always tried to live up to their nickname of "Fire Starter".

When it was really cold out, I used some ether in the air cleaner to get it to fire up.

Now I have EFI, and I love the ability to just turn the key and drive.

Clay

Yeah, it sure was. 10% or so. I wish we'd had more time to fiddle. My incomplete take? The stock 914-6 snorkel is sized for 110~ hp and just can't feed a hot-ish 2.2.

We were tuning for driveability, not power, but jumped from (a sickly) 135 hp at the wheels to 169.9. To say I was surprised is an understatement—as there's nothing all that exotic about the engine. It's a combo the builder has done a bunch of: used 2.2E P&Cs, a bit more compression, a "bit" of head work, Solex cams, Webers 40s, crankfire ignition, headers that were laying around (European Racing?), and a Patrick sport muffler. The result sounds like a 2.2 but feels like a 3.0, and a friend's 3.2 Turbo Look had nothing for it—but those 911s are heavy compared to 914s…



Goals…

Mine was already chopped , so I worked on the length of the MFI one and flared the end with a heatgun.
My engine had suffered previous lean backfires so Lh side was rather burnt,took many hrs to reshape to seal on the metal adaptors.
Was pleased to move on from the K&N setup as it was pretty load so happy to use stock air cleaner with standard paper element.

Just an FYI as I had the same plans for my car when I was building it. I made the mistake of welding my engine mount at the exact same height as a factory -6. Unfortunately there was something a miss. The air filter was just a to high and the engine lid wouldn't close. I was really disappointed. I so wanted that setup.