I have an Excel Spreadsheet calculating exactly how induction tract length (your snorkel) effects power output. The math is well known and very straightforward. In your case you definitely lost power. Removing the snorkel is the exact opposite of generating power - it decreases power. See the chart and the relationship between tract length and RPM. In your case, removing the snorkel probably made the engine more efficient at somewhere in the neighbourhood of 80,000 RPM - in other words, you removed power from the bike with the snorkel mod.
Exhaust is the same. The stock (OE) exhaust is very efficient and well designed. The only way to really increase power with exhaust is if you have total control over timing and air/fuel ration and even then, what you're really getting is a weight savings. In almost every case with respect to replacement exhaust it will make less power except possibly at high RPM.
By using those two things as reasons why you aren't eligible for warranty what they are really saying is, "We don't want to warranty it and we're looking for any excuse to get out of it" regardless of the fact that I have never broken or bent a wrist pin - even when up at 30 HP or so. Realistically, if you had dynoed your engine it would have been possibly .5 HP more then stock but with the snorkel removed it probably would have been less then stock HP.
The picture clearly shows the wrist pin failed on the down stroke. I think you're spot on with a wrist pin failure and I've never had one fail. The only way it could, in my experience, was if there was something defective in the manufacturing of the pin. I have broken (of all things) a balance shaft. I have broken a piston. But never a wrist pin even at ridiculous power levels and instant-hit Nitrous.
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