So yesterday I put my A/C belt back on that I removed a couple months ago because of it’s horrid squealing and to get back at me it decided that it was necessary to make up for all the lost time by increasing both the volume and intensity of the noise. This simply won’t do so I popped by Advanced Auto after work today and picked up another belt. Well, since I was already disassembling the airbox to get at the belts I decided to do a little modding while I was at it.
As it sits, the stock airbox for the LS1s is a bit restricting in my opinion with only two small slits feeding air to the filter. One is on the front of the airbox itself while the other is on the A/C condenser coil shroud. The other restriction is that half of the air filter itself is essentially blocked off by a couple of large plastic pieces. We’ll just have to do something about that.
Here is the airbox with half of the work completed. On the right you can see how it is setup stock with only half of the airspace being open. On the left is where I hacked out all the obstructive plastic to open up the flow.
Once I finished that I fitted the airbox back to the car. However as you can see here, there is still a large restriction in the form of the A/C condenser coil shroud only having a small slit in which the air is allowed into the box from the air dam below. That will need fixing too.
After a few highly precise and skilled wacks at the shroud with my utility knife, I now have an air opening about five times the size.
After putting the intake back together I decided to take her for a test spin. Only it wouldn’t stay cranked and would die on idle. This is where one remembers the importance of double checking that everything is back where it should be and that plugged in MAF & IAT sensors are crucial for operation. So with that small snafu corrected off we went. I immediately noticed that throttle response is greatly improved and there isn’t a delay in pushing the pedal and having something happen any longer. Oh, and the belt squeal is gone, yay.