well, as most of you know iv been hard at work on my motor
anyways after porting my TBI unit i have found something that wont help it flow as much it could, and i dunno if anyone else has seen this or not... but this is for you guys that still run the stock air cleaner assemblie and or who has converted to a duel snorkel set up
i would recommend do what i just did!
i grind down the lip that comes up it looked like it wouldn't suck more then half an inch around when the lid is on...

heres some pics

 

Any before pics? Can't say I have ever heard of anyone doing this. Your air flow gains will be minimal at most and your engine will be able to get enough air even without that mod. However, one you add heads and cam it could play into effect. That is however, if you are absoutely determined to use the stock air cleaner assembly.

 

I found the stock air cleaner to be ugly and useless, from the info that ive gathered throughout the internet, that stock cleaner assembly is insufficient even for a 4cyl engine much less a V8. I had CAI setup for my car theres a pic of it in "TBI engine shots" thread, i abandoned that idea and went back to an OE, for one i'll be adding an 427StingRay scoop so ill be getting the same effect of incoming air from the front and i can still get air from the base of the windshield which is said to be a HI air pressure point im sure the car will never see hi-speeds but what the heck.

 

There is an air silencer ring on the stock air cleaner that I know of and many people have removed it. I believe you found that.

 

Yeah, when I built my CAI, I tried beating it down. As I was beating it tho (that sounds dirty :S), all the welds popped and it popped out and cut my arm. Doh!

 

uh, yeah, not much of a secret, we were removing that back in 1998 when there was maybe two tbi guys on thirdgen..

that was before we knew any better though, anyone with any sense would have gone to an open element

 

yeah all you did was grind down the silencer ring. it would have been a lil easier and alot less time consuming to take a narrow chisel or standard screw driver and popped the tack welds and just pulled it out. id recommend you still do that cuz eventhough you did grind it down pretty good there is still a lil lip there which could rob some airflow, how lil in amount it can be. otherwise good find. helped out mine a lil when i took mine out too.
btw: if you do decide to remove the rest of it, make sure you dont bend out the bottom of the cleaner too much and make sure there arent holes in the base from ripping up the welds. i wrapped some electric tape around mine about 10 times to make sure it was sealed

 

were you there? no, we cut it off because trying to break off the tack welds would screw up the housing.

Doesnt matter anyways, that aircleaner is useless, like talking about modifying a 77 Mustang II

 

here, want somthing better, and fun to screw around with?


try to figure out how to fit the "soup bowl" over the TBI under our hoods.

 

In back to back testing, of a 2.25", 3", and 4" K+Ns on my 355 TBI'd F Body with my own prom, 90#/hr injectors, etc. etc, the car was actually fastest with the 2.25 element. I wound up building a same kind of dam like the stocker but used the 4" element. And the car was quickest with the 1.75" ridge and using the 4" air filter.

It's easy to assume a modification might work, but it takes actual testing to evaluate modifications. And what works on one car might not work on another.

 

I had a Harwood cowl induction hood, so I had room for a 4" open element, and actually used bowls from KMart to make bits like that at one time.
Eventually I wound up just making what looked like a Vette Carb Flame Arrester, with a brass ring on the bottom, and then 1/4 screen soldered onto that rested against the air filter lid to hold it in place.