ok so this happened by accident pretty much.... i decided to remove the flimsy black plastic piece that connects to the bottom of the front bumper to the headlights. here is a pic, u can see it in covering the entire lower half of the air dam.




removing this piece was purely for cosmetic purposes.after driving for about 30 seconds i couldn't believe how much more power my car had. if you look at this pic u can get an idea of how much more air is hitting the cai. the plastic bumper piece covered the entire hole in the space shown in this pic




looking at the right hole this is all the only direct air passage hitting the filter. with the left side now free, much more air can reach the filter.


now this is all pretty elementary and when i got my cai i pretty only heard more noise, felt little if any difference in power. having this extra channel of air getting to my filter feels amazing. i wouldn't think in a million years that any noticable amount of power could of been felt from this but that is really isn't the case.

mods include crower stage 2 cams, afx ecu, greddy evo catback, unorthadox upd, bosal header, aem cai, 55mmtb, hotter plugs

i barely touch the gas pedal and the car takes off pretty quick. i almost hit the cars in front of me from a stop because it takes off so quick, i even got a little car sick at from driving not used to the feel right away.

im pretty sure my mods have a lot to do with why i feel such a difference. but does anyone believe me that this could net such a nice gain??? why is the gain so much for something that wouldn't seem to do anything???

Looks good..one thing though, if it rains, that filter is going to get soaked..thats not good :( Hopefully you live where it doenst rain much.

Look at my sig ;)

I've had that done for almost 6 months now and I've been through the worste rain....like tornado weather...and I've never had a problem :thumbsup

The gains from doing that on my car with the AEM CAI were not really noticeable. At first I imagined that my car was way faster, but then later after switching back and forth many times, I didn't notice much difference except that the filter got a lot dirtier without the cover on.

maybe it has something to do with my cams. ive always had a little lag up to 3500 rpms after they installed. the lag is gone completely now.

yea, ive had that done on my 97-99 style bumper for a while. it does help but the filter gets sooo dirty. i try to clean it once a month. now i just have a short ram due to my POS bypass valve breaking..

I also had mine out for along time. Drove it through winter and very heavy rain storms. Never once had a problem with it what-so-ever.

one more pic of the piece i removed covering the front dam, its not the piece under the cai.