A guide to Triple 4 Wading Kits

What makes Triple 4 Wading Kits stand out from the crowd?

There are lots of wading kits on the market, but what makes Triple 4 Engineering wading kits the best? And why do I need a wading kit any way?

Why Do I Need A Wading Kit?

In a nutshell, the axles, the gearbox and the transfer box need to breath as the volume of air moving around the transmission components expands and contracts as the temperature of these units fluctuates up and down.

All transmission units have some form of breather fitted at the factory, to allow the expanding air out and the contracting air in to the units. This works well until you take your 4x4 into water and mud at anything deeper than a puddle. Factory breathers on the axles on Land Rovers are around 500-600mm from ground level, with the gearbox and transfer box terminating above the gearbox bellhouising. When you hit the cold water, the transmission units are cooled rapidly, creating a massive vacuum, sucking air into the unit via the breather hose.

However, in deep water and mud, this causes problems. The factory breathers are only 500-600mm from the ground. At best, there is a good chance that some water is going to be sucked in through the breather hose as the air contracts, diluting the gear oil. At worst the breather hose can't flow air if it is blocked by the water, the air inside the transmission is still contracting, and creates even more vacuum. This higher vacuum then finds the path of least resistance, which is usually the diff pinion oil seal. The vacuum causes the seal to implode, sucking in the water, dirt & mud and damaging the bearings and internal components of the expensive differentials, it also causes an oil leak as the seal is now permenantly damaged. Besides leaking oil, the damaged seal also let in dirt and mud, compouding the issue.

Some people try to get away with this by changing the transmission oils after every off road trip. This is not only expensive, there is also the damage the contaminated oil does to the transmission before you can get to change the oil. Fitting a wading kit not only prevents oil contamination, it also pays for itself within 2 oil changes.

What makes Triple 4 Wading Kits the Best?

Our background is in vehicle preparation, everything from overland vehicles to race cars. We have fitted all the leading brands of wading kit, and to be fair, we were always disappointed.

After all, these are supposed to be the leading and most well respected 4x4 companies in our industry. The quality of the components used was lacking somewhat and the prices were, and still are silly money for the quality of these components supplied in the wading kits. Some companies are retailing cheap hose and a few 20p plastic unions for over £80?? It was glaring obvious that things could be seriously improved, so that’s what we did. And so Triple 4 Wading Kits were born. We sourced the best parts available and built a series of different kits around these high quality components. Making Triple 4 Wading Kits far superior to anything else on the market.

We’ll start off with a run down of the components used in our wading kits. 

We use 8mm nylon hose, most other kit use 6mm. Using 8mm hose allows a lot more air flow over 6mm hose. Overkill? maybe, but if it works on a competition car, then it's good enough for every situation you're likely to be in with your 4x4. The hose you’ll find in a lot of kits is cheap nylon, it is rock hard and very inflexible and easily kinked. The hose found in Triple 4 kits is the finest quality nylon hose on the market. Triple 4 hose is ultra flexible and highly abrasion resistant. 

All Triple 4 axle, gearbox and transmission breather unions are brass or nickel plated brass and have nickel plated brass and stainless steel hose locking mechanisms. What you find in lesser kits are cheap brittle plastic components with plastic and mild steel locking mechanisms. The cheap plastic components are easily damaged in an off road environment, compromising the integrity of the seal, and the mild steel locking mechanism can corrode internally and won’t release the hose when the time comes for any maintenance.

Triple 4 90° breather unions are also swivel unions, which allows you to position the union in any direction. Other kits use cheaper fixed unions which point where the union just happened to tighten up. The internal diameter of Triple 4 breather unions is also way bigger than the tiny pin hole of the standard factory fit banjo unions. Triple 4 unions are much less likely to get clogged up, which is a major issue with the factory banjo unions.

Triple 4 connectors and “Y” pieces are made from a premium grade technopolymer and use the same nickel plated brass and stainless steel hose locking mechanisms.

Triple 4 wading kits use a billet alloy manifold. These alloy manifolds are superb quality and are far superior to the plastic ones found in other kits. The advantage of an alloy manifold is that they are very adaptable. The unions are interchangeable offering lots of scope and interchangeability. Again, the unions used in our billet manifolds are premium nickel plated brass unions with nickel plated brass with stainless steel hose locking mechanisms. 

Another thing we always found lacking with other kits is the small number of cable ties and other fixings supplied to supposedly complete the job. We always ended up having to supplement them from my stock. Not a major issue for a dedicated vehicle workshop, but this could be a major inconvenience for the D.I.Y. man at home. All Triple 4 kits come with more than enough cable ties and fixings to complete the job.

To finish of the wading kit, each kit includes 2 metres of alloy maluform tube. This tube runs from the manifold and up the snorkel / raised air intake.  This rubber coated alloy tube retains its shape and gives a high end finish to your wading kit installation. It is also UV stable, so won't discolour of crack with the sunlight, unlike the nylon hose used in cheaper kits.

KIT SPECIFIC PARTS

Our 200 / 300TDi kits also come with a breather plate for the timing case. This has not escaped the Triple 4 treatment. The Triple 4 breather is made from 5mm alloy (powder coated in either black or orange) and comes complete with gasket (which you don’t find in other kits) and stainless steel fixings. Cheaper kits use either a heavy steel plate, or a thin steel plate which is only thick enough for a couple of threads to screw the breather union into, not quite enough to guarantee a perfect seal.

Our wading kits for later Land Rover models with plastic fuel tanks come with a fuel tank breathers. The breathers on the plastic fuel tanks also terminate relatively low down on the vehicle and can let water in when deep wading.

Want to know more?

If you need any more information, we are never too busy to help. Our contact number is 07510 978470. The phone is usually the quickest and easiest way to answer any of your questions.