air box

[phat albert]

i have a 97 eldorado. i was told there is a way to modify the air intake box to get more horse power. i already opened the exhaust and have a k&n filter for it, but of course want more can anyone help me out?

[Bob D]

Well phat, I think if the majority of this forum was to respond you'd find the feedback saying that it's not a good idea. The reason is that it's yet to be proven that there is any gain from opening up the box (beyond intake noise) and you really are setting the engine up for a major failure from hydrolock due to water injestion, something that is much more possible that a lot of people think.

The bottom line is, the factory system works pretty well for getting cool air to the intake. There has been a lot of discussion, and down right emotional reaction on this subject lately.

[JasonA]

In addition to what BobD said, the 98+ systems are different than the 97 and previous intakes. The 98+ systems used a separate resonator housing that folks sometimes cap off, and there's also some sort of an air chamber "box" that feeds the main filter box, on those cars. Your '97 car is simple -- the air box breathes air over the PCM (to keep that from overheating), through the filter, and on to the throttle body. No real room for improvement there. There's not much room for ducting a hose down to ground level for cooler air (unlike the 98+ cars I understand).

If you take your filter top off and remove the filter, you'll notice that the lower half of the box is actually soft-mounted to the top of the PCM housing...with little rubber "nubs". Work the filter box out of those nubs and you can completely remove it. And that's it -- it's that simple. There's nothing else to the intake system beyond that.

If you look in the upper half of the filter housing, you'll notice it has a few "dividers" that run across the filter housing. I removed those, to make it one big open chamber. It didn't really do anything, and I don't even know if it made it louder. But I was just playing around and wanted to try that. No gains really. I went with a completely open K&N cone filter, with a rudimentary heat shield, and didn't like it. I found that stock worked best for me.

I feel like I have to add a disclaimer: don't feel offended that I like stock better. If you want to do any mods, I wouldn't in any way want to disuade you from that desire.