Yahoo! GeoCities Intake Silencer Modification
There is much debate out there about this easy to do mod. Does it actually increas your horse power? Nonetheless, the people who have done it, say it does make your car sound alot cooler. So I decided that this was something that I was going to try out myself. From what I saw, there were basically three paths to go. One was to remove the silencer and the whole air intake stream altogether. Doing this will make the turbo draw all the air from the side wheel panel wall. Another approach was to go buy tubing from a local hardware store to draw air deeper from the side wheel wall (Here). Then I fell upon the optimal solution, which does require a bit of balls, but was by far the best one in my opinion. The solution was to simply take the silencer, and CUT off the air reservoir from the silencer and replace it back, ram scoop and all. This solution uses the original air intake setup and looks stock since all the mods are hidden inside the wheel panel wall. (here is the link to his site: Intake Silencer Modification)
Since the other two solutions simply removed the silencer altogether, why would you need that piece of plastic again anyway? Right, so just cut it and put it back. It did take some time for me to persuade myself to cut the thing because the damage done is irreversible. The guy who did this, jacked up his car and removed the tire to get to the silencer, but I was able to do this without jacking up the car or removing the tire. Here is how I did it.

  1. Turn the wheels all the way to the right.
  2. Remove the ram scoop inside the engine bay (Make image 1 look like image 2).
  3. Remove the hoses attached to the air cleaner case top, detach the large pipe attached directly to the air cleaner box, then open the air cleaner case cover and remove the air filter to expose the silencer pipe (image 3). I believe this is a step could have been skipped, but you it ensures the pipe is placed back correctly when putting it back.
      Now you should see a pipe insert where the ram scoop attached into the cars side wall, and the other end of the silencer pipe in the air cleaner box.
  4. Remove the first bolt which attaches the silencer to the car, the actual silencer is located behind the passenger fender wall (image 4).
  5. You now need to detach the wheel liner from the bumper and bend it back and away. You don't need to remove it all the way (image 5).
  6. This was a little hard since the car wasn't jacked up, but it can be done. From under the car, reach between the wheel lining and the fender wall, you'll see the second location from where the silencer is bolted to the car. Though hard to reach, remove this bolt to free the silencer from the car (image 6).
  7. Remove the silencer from the car (image 7).
  8. Cut away the large air reservoir from the rest of the piping (image 8).
  9. Place and bolt back the silencer tubing from step 4.
  10. make sure the pipe is set correctly in the air cleaner box. This step can be skipped if step 3 was skipped.
  11. Reconnect the wheel lining to the bumper.
  12. Put your air filter back and reconnect all the tubing to the air cleaner box.
  13. bolt back in place the ram scoop.
The reason this is probably the better solution, is that, you are using the original air intake piping and it keeps the air cleaner box secured. It also keeps the car looking stock so those subie mechanics don't know anything is different.
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1