Can a mower run under water with a Snorkel?

hey guys! i was wondering your opinoins on this. if i where to build a air tight snorkel for my briggs 11hp on my mudder if you think i could take it in water above the flywheel. do you think as soon as water touched the flywheel it would stall because of the tremendous load put on it from water? id emagin it would turn it into a giant water pump. and as we all know. water is much thicker than air so im wondering if it would just stop the engine..... what do you think?

if you could make it air tight, and keep the coil wires from cutting out, it might handle it. i've had water up to the carb before and it only stalled from water in the carb.

ya but you need to make all the electrical waterproof

That's a lot easier to do once you strip down the wiring to just the basics. I was amazed at the rats nest that I replaced with just a few wires when I redid my wiring. All those safety switches and junk.

the amperage isnt high enough to short anything out, only thing is the sparkplug wire
but a buddy of mine said he put a 4 foot tall snorkle on an old snapper RER and he let it go on its own through 5 feet of water all he could see was the top of the snorkle through most of it and it ran fine the whole way

try it, ihavent made my snorkel yet or i would already know if you can or not, make sure you have a high mount exhaust to like a stack atleast the hight of your snorkel so it you do stall your motor doesnt fill with water. also keep rmps high, slowly go into the water the first time. waterproof the electronis, and dont forget to add the crank breather into the snorkel dont want a water filled block

I never thought about making a snorkel... I did not think I would ever need one as I never go through water higher than my clutch peddle.

i dont know if i would need one because the highest whater ive had on my roper is over the front wheels and i only have turf tires and it made it

I put a snorkel on mine and it works great. It did bog it down a little and i had water right over my hood. But that was before i did a pully swap which adds a lot of load on the mower so i am sure it would kill my mower if i tried to do it now.

To Snorkel or Not to snorkel.

That is the question.

A magentic field generates a current whether its wet or dry.

Water may dampen it or not, I aint no engineer

The trick is keeping the ignition dry and sealed. A liberal coating of silicone will help with that.

Any snorkels should be constructed of tubing built larger than the stock exhaust or intake

and both should be snorkelled.

As for the fan. Keep the revs up, it's designed to move air, it will move water even better, but it will load the engine down.

Also, any vents on the driveline, and air intake system (including carb) should be routed to the top of your snorkel

Our ATV's used to be mudded and we had them above the handle bars with a snorkel but like Chopperhed said, route any vent lines up or else you will have problems...we weren't able to find the vent line for out front diff on our TRX350 but the water could and it cost us a front diff which isn't cheap(was cheaper to buy an entire parts bike). We also used a Silicone spray and every time we went for a drive we would spray all the ignition system connections, etc. with it and we never had a problem except when the electric rad fan wouldn't turn on so we had to wire it in with a switch directly to the battery.

Just need a good spark plug boot. If it stays dry, it will run.

I put grease in the spark plug boot to stop the water from shorting it out. As for the all of the plugs i used liquid tape. I also moved the starter selnoid to the top of my mower.

Bandit1 wrote:

I also moved the starter selnoid to the top of my mower.

Good Idea

A buddy and I were out four wheeling one day and he sank the nose of his truck in a narrow creek.

He was using a Warn electric winch with the solenoids on the bumper.

The winch worked, but once water got in the solenoids, they went to full power and basically wound all his cable out before he cut the wire.

I had the solenoids for my winch up under the hood and never had the problem.

I betting that older solenoids might do the same thing.

Basically your starter would kick in until it lost power.

Couldnt you just bypass the silinod with a water restiant toggel switch that could handle the amps?

Sure, go find a 200 amp rated waterproof switch. I haven't heard of one, but they might make it.

Stretch44875 wrote:

Sure, go find a 200 amp rated waterproof switch. I haven't heard of one, but they might make it.

You don't need 200 Amps

I use a sealed 60 amp pushbutton to start my 750, and it works just fine.

yeah 60 Amp would work, but water intensifies electricity, hence needing a higher Amp switch.

Well I have a boat, there's tons of 200amp rated switches for marine use, but why would u need one for fresh water. And where would you use the switch?

Thunderdivine wrote:

Well I have a boat, there's tons of 200amp rated switches for marine use, but why would u need one for fresh water. And where would you use the switch?

Water is water it still conducts electrity.

The switch would be wired in place of the solenoid. eliminating the start portion of the ignition switch

Well..... technically, water does not conduct electricity. If you take distilled water, and test resistance across it, there is no connection at all. Add just a couple grains of salt, and you have instant conductivity.

Outside of lab environments, Chopper is right though LOL

Chopperhed wrote:

Thunderdivine wrote:

Well I have a boat, there's tons of 200amp rated switches for marine use, but why would u need one for fresh water. And where would you use the switch?

Water is water it still conducts electrity.

The switch would be wired in place of the solenoid. eliminating the start portion of the ignition switch

Yea kinda, DC 12v will work in freshwater for long time, but not when we talk about high voltage AC. And also higher voltage DC like coils and so on.

TheRainbowBoxer wrote:

Well..... technically, water does not conduct electricity. If you take distilled water, and test resistance across it, there is no connection at all. Add just a couple grains of salt, and you have instant conductivity.

Outside of lab environments, Chopper is right though LOL

True that, I always throw that in the face to Audio freaks that always want they're GOLD connections. Nothing's better than copper and silver. Silver maybe the best but too expensive.

Also since most tractors at least what I've read, most of our tractors are - to chassis, then it would be easy to isolate the + side in waterproof boxes with only the + side switched.

Yeah you can do it with a normal high current switch but doing that means you have a very high current traveling very close to you, if it got wet enough the full current capacity could travel through the water and the second you touch that switch, you'll get fried.

That technically is no reason to use a solenoid. But it's the safest way when dealing with high currents. Remember, It's the Current that harms and kills you, Not Voltage.