It'* not all the air that hits the center, enough to mark it considerably. And if the air was actually "restricted" this wouldn't occur. A bad negative pressure inside the box would create equal suction across the filter element. and that mark wouldn't occur. Something to think about.

Airbox'* are designed to laminate or make air "linear" to help the sensors along the path. But so does a cone, Air boxes have alot more than airflow engineered into them. Resonation/Linear Flow/PCM cooling among things that if you decide to keep an airbox shell, make me think "gutting" them isn't a wise route to follow.

Very true I made sure of the PCM cooling before I gutted mine. On my 97 SE the pcm is in its own box.
Linear flow is the reason you DO NOT want to take the MAF screen out.

I want to state here I don't know what/how much, if even appreciable, is lost by gutting an airbox. I don't think we have a real Air Dynamics Engineer around. But one thing is clear to me, your not helping anything by doing so. If you want to have better airflow available for Modding, do it right and eliminate it.

well, as far as a general gutting video, i made this video in summer. i was bored one day and browsing the forums and read about it. atleast on my car it was breathing through a little 2 inch hole.

before watching this, beware i cuss allot. if that offends you, dont watch. you have been warned lol. i was surprised how the gm engineers did this. personally, atleast on my car i think it is a really dumb setup with the tiny intake hole. then again, it was designed for ms daisy lol.

all the logistics of doing it aside, it sounds alot cooler lol. it sounds like i dropped a v8 in compared to my dads car when i get on it. the only issue i had, is when i parked it for a week, being parked at 75 degrees and being started a week later at 25, it didnt want to start without the help of my foot the first startup. that may be because of the airbox, or the rusted out exhaust or both, but after the one startup the computer went through its learning curve and its not happened again.

anyway, here is the video to the original poster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEzYNHwNsaE