Ive heard much talk about gutting the air box. what exactly does this do and how is it done exactly?? as you can obviously tell im fairly new to the car world. thanx much

well essentially guttin the airbox is cuttin the internal resonator out of the airbox.. the resonator holds back some of the engine noise that may exit through the intake. It also causes a lot more air turbulance behind it ( this makin it harder on your MAF sensor if you have removed your MAF screen to read accurately ). The resonator also restricts airflow going in.. if you ever take a look at your filter.. you will see only a circle that'* dirty where the air has entered. I notice you have a 97.. I don't know if there'* a difference between the airbox of a SE and SSEI.. but on mine.. the airbox has an oval opening that utilizes the whole opening on the frame for it ( which I ducted more air for.. ) but I noticed on a 95.. it was a lil circle instead.. so you MAY have to do some cuttin of the opening to allow more air into the airbox..

A Dremel tool will be your best friend for this

Check this out too

http://www.bonnevilleclub.com/techinfo/?article=40

about how much of a difference will gutting the airbox make? Any downside to doing this, will it create any idle problems or lose low end torque? I read the tech article about CAI but for now free mods are the way for me.

1st post here, just found this board a couple weeks ago, pretty cool. I've had my car for almost 3yrs but could never find anything about Bonnevilles, now that I have found this board, I can get ideas and places to find parts

I don't know what difference it will make alone.. but if you remove the MAF screen along with it.. it will give you roughly around 5HP ( just barely can feel a difference HP gain ).

With just the gutted airbox you will not run into problems ( unless you didn't clean the debris out properly and such ) .. removing of the MAF screen is a lil trickier with gutted/modified airbox.. some ppl have success ( Tamara and I for one ) with it.. while others run into an idle problem with the MAF screen removed ( due to too much air turbulance that the MAF sensor doesn't know what'* going on ). So if you want to try it.. go for it.. just save the MAF screen, and worse case scenario that you run into idling problem.. just pop it back in.. and done.. it doesn't take long to do these mods.

P.*..

Welcome aboard our club.. you'll love it here.. full of info.. and funny stuff

cool, I'll give it a try if it doesn't make a difference, it should hopefully sound a little meaner.

thanks,
Jeff

I just thought of this. Is there something that can be done to the MAF Sensor, (the electronic part), that will trick it in to thinking that the air is stable, so removing the screen won't cause it to go crazy. Kinda like what some do with the fake O2 sensor?

I don't know.. the turbulance from the removal of MAf screen cause the sensor to go nuts as it read so much air current.. then the turbulance creats a lil vortex and or vacuum and the car thinks it'* not drawing enough air.. then all of a sudden it is.. so it roughens up the idle.. I think the only way is to mount a lil piece of screen in front of the sensor so the air that is flowing through the sensor is linear ( and yet the rest would be open to cause less constriction )

As for gutting the airbox, I can't imagine there being any downsides.
The intake noise will be slightly louder, and whether that'* a downside or not is up to individual preference. Obviously, GM was trying to make the engine as silent as possible, so they compromised the performance a little bit by putting in the resonator in the air box so they had a nice quiet intake.
The MAF screen is a compromise too, it sacrifices a little bit of free breathing for a smoother, more consistent idle.

My experience has been just like yours, but I think my mileage stayed the same or slightly better.