Silencer Box Delete!

[99Yuk]

While I was at Home Depot gathering parts for my poor man's CAI. I bought a 2" rubber Fernco cap.

The idea is that the big silencer box that sits on top of the distributor that says 'Vortec' helps with Initial Accell as it provides more filtered air, but it causes turbulence when pulling hard. As always it's a trade-off. I've read where a few guys have removed this box and capped the hole, but no none was able to say why. And some guys even don't think that it's a good idea. Who knows, but I'll try it. I kept the box, so if I don't like it, I can put it back. But keep this in mind, all of the aftermarket CAI kits (K&N, Volant, Spectra, Air-raid, etc) don't have this box.


Tools Required:
10mm Hex driver to remove the bolt holding the box to the intake.
Flat screwdriver to pry loose the old box and the pry on the cap.
8mm Hex driver to loosen and tighten the clamp.


Step 1:
Using the 8mm hex driver, loosen the clamp on the existing box.

Step 2:
Using the 10mm hex driver remove the bolt holding the existing box to the intake

Step 3:
Using a flat screwdriver gently pry off the old Vortec box.
Put it off to the side in a safe place.


Now your truck should look like this.


Step 4:
Your cap should look like this.

Using the flat screwdriver, gently pry and stretch the cap over the hole. technically the hole opening is 2.5", and the cap is only 2". I couldn't find a 2.5" cap, they only had 2" or 3". In any case the 2" cap will stretch over the hole.

Step 5:
Using the 8mm hex driver, tighten the clamp over the cap.
When your done it should look like this.




That's it!
It takes about 10 minutes, if that.


Keep your old box in case you don't like this mod. Initial impressions are that blipping the throttle in the driveway does cause some hesitation, But I havn't tried it WOT or hwy cruising yet. I think that's the trade-off, loose a split second on accell, but gain on WOT. After running this for a week or so, I'll post up my impressions on my CAI thread.
http://www.tahoeyukonforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8430

 

[bowtiefreak]

good write up. It took me a minute to figure out what a silencer box was. I replaced my intake days after I bought the truck years ago. Good job. Follow this up with a performance update.

 

[foreverfalcon40]

Errrrr....seal that intake all your doing is sucking in hot air.

good write up tho. I have heard of this before.

 

[riviera rider]

Errrrr....seal that intake all your doing is sucking in hot air.

good write up tho. I have heard of this before.

i was thinking the same thing with the whole cut in the air filter box


let us know how it goes!

 

[retorq]

His setup is referred to as a WAI - Warm Air Intake

 

[99Yuk]

Ok, ok... Laugh it up...HAHAHAHA......

Honestly, retorq have you even read this thread?
CAI, do I really need one? From the beginning?

What I'm ultimately building is a hybrid K&N/Homedepot CAI.
HomeMade DIY Intake Kit with some other mods.

If Air-raid and Spectre can call thiers a CAI kit, then so can I. All I did was take a good hard look at what they have done and decide to reproduce it.
I'm essentially building thier kits, just slowly and experimentily with hard numbers to back up each mod as it happens, because no one else on here seemed to have any clue what intake temps numbers they were really reading, or any other performance based numbers other than it feels good. What about actual numbers? IAT? TPS%? etc.

Besides if I can do the experiments, and they work or they fail, then someone else may benefit from reading this.

And if I may add, I think that the hole in the airbox is actually better than an air-raid or spectre because it 1) still uses the original hole in the fender for some air and 2) at least has some form of heat shield facing the engine block vs. having the entire air filter exposed.

But wait! There's more! So far, after a few weeks of monitoring IAT's, the temps are only marginally higher than stock, and only at idle, and within minutes of running at anything over 40kph, the intake temps are the same as ambient temps. So what's the big deal? In all reality spectre, air-raid and even my homemade kits seem to work because of the easier breathing than any hit taken from a Warm Air Intake.

All that being said, I've realized that there are trade-offs to modding our trucks. Performance gains here are offset by potential negatives there. My respect for the GM designers has just gone up a little bit just with me playing with my intake. Those boys have to balance heat soak vs. air flow/ease of breathing vs. extra air for initial accell. I'll bet they have spent hours testing various designs.

An example would be the silencer box. It's there for my 99 yukon, but it's gone on my dad's 2006 Yukon XL, but I see that it's back on Black Coffee's new 2010 truck. Why was it removed for a few years only to have it come back? What does the silencer box really do? What are GM's numbers from testing on that? One day, I'd love to go over GM's spreadsheet on those test results.

In the mean time, the only thing that I can do is methodically do my testing and report back on the results and deal with guys like retorq. The rest of you guys, thanks for the encouragement, and I will post back the results of this mod.

 

[718frankb]

i used a 1 1/2 cap and siliconed it into the hole of the silencer then put the box back on so it doesnt look like theres anything missing . looks cleaner in my opinion . also try to use a peice of rigid tube instead of the factory flexi to smooth things out. remember if you have an egr setup your still pumping hot carbon into the combustion chambers so what a little more warm air -volume is the key

 

[retorq]

Ok, ok... Laugh it up...HAHAHAHA......

Honestly, retorq have you even read this thread?
CAI, do I really need one? From the beginning?

What I'm ultimately building is a hybrid K&N/Homedepot CAI.
HomeMade DIY Intake Kit with some other mods.

If Air-raid and Spectre can call thiers a CAI kit, then so can I. All I did was take a good hard look at what they have done and decide to reproduce it.
I'm essentially building thier kits, just slowly and experimentily with hard numbers to back up each mod as it happens, because no one else on here seemed to have any clue what intake temps numbers they were really reading, or any other performance based numbers other than it feels good. What about actual numbers? IAT? TPS%? etc.

Besides if I can do the experiments, and they work or they fail, then someone else may benefit from reading this.

And if I may add, I think that the hole in the airbox is actually better than an air-raid or spectre because it 1) still uses the original hole in the fender for some air and 2) at least has some form of heat shield facing the engine block vs. having the entire air filter exposed.

But wait! There's more! So far, after a few weeks of monitoring IAT's, the temps are only marginally higher than stock, and only at idle, and within minutes of running at anything over 40kph, the intake temps are the same as ambient temps. So what's the big deal? In all reality spectre, air-raid and even my homemade kits seem to work because of the easier breathing than any hit taken from a Warm Air Intake.

All that being said, I've realized that there are trade-offs to modding our trucks. Performance gains here are offset by potential negatives there. My respect for the GM designers has just gone up a little bit just with me playing with my intake. Those boys have to balance heat soak vs. air flow/ease of breathing vs. extra air for initial accell. I'll bet they have spent hours testing various designs.

An example would be the silencer box. It's there for my 99 yukon, but it's gone on my dad's 2006 Yukon XL, but I see that it's back on Black Coffee's new 2010 truck. Why was it removed for a few years only to have it come back? What does the silencer box really do? What are GM's numbers from testing on that? One day, I'd love to go over GM's spreadsheet on those test results.

In the mean time, the only thing that I can do is methodically do my testing and report back on the results and deal with guys like retorq. The rest of you guys, thanks for the encouragement, and I will post back the results of this mod.

Who's laughing in the thread?? And what do you mean deal with guys like me?? Did you take my post as a joke?? Have you never heard of a warm air intake before?? Do you need a hug??

 

[99Yuk]

Ya, your right. I did need a hug yesterday. I woke up this morning and realized that I was being a dick about it. I'm sorry.

I had a really, really bad day yesterday. On Sat, I poured a new concrete pad for a new three bay garage on one of my rental properties. I spent a little over $11,000.00 on this thing so far. On Sat night the tenant comes home, pulls three stakes from the form and drives his 03 Tahoe on it and parks it overnight. So yesterday the cops were involved, and the laywer was involved, etc. My cornflakes were definitly pissed on. So I took your comment the wrong way. My tenant violated his lease agreement that he signed by willfully pulling the stakes and damaging the less than 8 hours old pad. We served him with papers saying that he has to pay for the removal of the old pad, and replace it. he now has 7 days to do that, if he doesn't couph up the money, then we start the eviction process. Sucks because we still have to replace the pad.

Here's the aprox breakdown on costs of the pad.

And those costs don't even reflect the labour....
To be fair to the tenant, he doesn't have to pay for the ground work to be redone, it wasn't damaged.

BTW, first impressions from driving the new mod around...It's even louder in the front now. The noise starts at around 20% TPS vs around 30%TPS from before, and it's louder, and deeper. I couldn't tell any kind of performace because I was dragging around my trailer yesterday. I'm not sure that I like the louder noise yet. At 50% or higher TPS it sounds like there a banshee under there!

---------- Post added at 07:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:41 AM ----------

try to use a peice of rigid tube instead of the factory flexi to smooth things out. remember if you have an egr setup your still pumping hot carbon into the combustion chambers so what a little more warm air -volume is the key

Yup, that's the extra mod that I'm going to try vs. the guy in that Homemade DIY link. I think that I can replace that slinky flex hose with smooth plastic pipe as well. But the angles are going to be all off, so that's what i'm working on next. I still can't find that pipe clamp ceiling mount. I'm going to have to go to an exclusive plumbing store when I have time.

Which reminds me. One guy on here already has an EGR delete. A few questions were asked about what that does, but no real answers. Maybe I can try to find one of those and try it too?
Thanks for the tip!

 

[moviewithnotitle]

99yuk...
keep us posted. I too was wondering about this box being anything more than an air reserve.