i traced a noise in the front end of my EL GHIA thats been givin my the s**t for a while now

in the front drivers side wheel arch inside the front splash panel there is a snorkel type tube that goes up and locates just behind the battery and runs down and out of wheel arch - this tube had been dislodged and was loose

WTF is its purpose

its the battery snorkel - just to get some air in to cool the battery down!

I would say it is desgined to suck air up to the battery to keep it cool.

Ford I6's run rather hot by design - not sure of V8's.
When you charge a battery, it gets hot as a result of all that current that gets pushed into it
Combine these two facts and you need to do something to keep the battery a little cooler otherwise the water boils away which is not good.

I know my EF's has some ducting to provide fresh air to cool the battery. Air is picked up from around the front bumper and directed into the plastic box that the battery sits in. The air is expelled into the right fender area. Don't know if there is any ducting within the fender area but if there is, maybe mine is also dislodged which may explains the noise i get

Trivial fact:
Cooling air is also provided for some less than obvios reasons in some cars. The celica GT4 had a small circular duct next to the intercooler duct on the bonnet. This small duct was to provide air to the cam belt which kept on breaking in rally use. The duct work had to be homologated to be used in their rally cars so found it's way into these road versions

Cheers.

I have never had the snorkle or battery box and have never had a problem with my battery....

From the way it is positioned I dont think it really has that much affect. It would supply air where no air was normally present, but i think the battery is designed well enough to cope on its own...

It's good to hear you have not had problems

Car manufacturers are notoriosly cheep bastards so i really doubt they would put a battery box and snorkle in 1000's of cars unless they needed to
They must design their cars to run in all of australia, so maybe it's more of a problem around broken hill during mid summer with aircon and doing 120 KPH for some time.

I can probably toss it out here in melbourne, but why bother
Yeh, i know it also gets hot in perth but in my experiance, not as hot as the middle of auz.

Cheers.

Mine came loose and half fell out a long time ago!
I was told that it served no real effective purpose and wouldn't effect the battery so I ditched it! havn't had any probs and it's been off for well over a year!

the batery snorkles seem to have a habit of falling off....... well done ford!

from memory of studying batteries in aviation the snorkel is actually to release any charged air of loose chemicals? not 100% sure but that's what i remember. in planes they run to a container of bi-carb then out to the air because the bi-carb neutralises the acids that are in the batteries.

Interesting info - now if only i knew this when i tried to bring a dry motorbike battery with me on a flight back from NZed. I would have argued much more than i did As it was they cited all the corrosion risks caused by batteries to the aluminium in planes and wouldn't let me take it on the plane.
Another corrosion risk on planes is horses - they piss everywhere and it is either acidic or alkaline board.

In reality, i doubt that ford or any other car manufacturer would care if a car correoded outside it's warrenty period

Cheers

it would aslo serve as a drain for any battery acid and water that might be spilled or come out of the battery, motorbikes have a drain hose to keep acid away from the frame etc