How to: Air Box Silencer Delete

[J.Skellington]

it will provide actual cooler air to your air box thats for sure, being that it's hooking back up to the fresh air inlet and no longer making it useless.

[efmd3]

this post inspired me and i finally went out and did this.
LOVE the sound, the whirr was extremely loud in the high gears and i, too, could faintly hear the bypass.
i even got those cherished "nice car!" looks from some of the neighbor's kids

[Superorb]

Can you hear anyhting from outside the car? On the way to work this morning I could hear it spooling but only to like 4k rpms; after that it got quiet again. I haven't been lead foot driving though. I never drive fast but I love the sound of it spooling even in low gears.

[efmd3]

for me it is loudest when climbing a hill in 4th or 5th (full boost)

[bdpAKAknox]

Very good write up
Thank you for being so precise.

[DTFH3030]

noce.

[clemsonteg]

I couldnt get those plastic screws undone to save my life, all i did was strip 2 of them, so i just undid the clips on the bottom and folded the plastic fender back a bit so i could get to the underside nut of the silencer, and i coaxed the silencer out through the whole right there i made by folding back the plastic. Is there a trick to getting those screws out? I may reinstall the silencer if I get the spt intake that I want

[J.Skellington]

when all else fails use a flathead screwdriver

[Newera09]

hmmm interested in doing this maybe tomorrow, oh wait a minute its gonna be f-cking 7 degress, WTF. Wish me luck

[Xantos]

Just did it, may I recommend a method with no jack, and only two clips to remove. For 02-03's I presume only.

Tools: 10mm socket, phillips screwdriver, two hands, and safety goggles(no seriously, if you're under your car wear them, **** falls off and gets in your eyes)

After following the original steps for "ram air" removal, you should have a scene that looks like this:



With that in mind, remove the bolt denoted by the red circle (10mm).


Now, go down to the fender well and undo the two clips directly under the car, and the two on the side of the fender (2 under are screw-ish, they sorta pop out. One on the side of the fender {denoted by the red circle} is a screwish type, due to a rally accident mine is already broken and useless, your's should not look like this picture.)



Peel back all of this fender lining, it's very flexible and will pop back in to shape on a whim, so dont feel bad about folding it under the car like I did.
Now take a look under the car, you will see the snorkus and by peering around, the 2nd bolt that needs to go.



Get out from under the car, and remove the right side (the area you're working on) fog. It's already removed in this pic, so the red circles denote where the screws would be.



Here is the result! Red circle denoting the hard to reach bolt we saw from under the car.



This is a real ***** a and half. Undoing that bolt took what turned out to be over an hour of guessing and trying. A traditional socket is too long and wide (dont we wish we all had that problem?). I didn't have a smaller sized hand wrench thing. Pliers where too wide to leverage. So after trying it all, I realized that this bolt (on my car at least) is not tightened at all, I removed it by hand.

After this it's simply a matter of removing the snorkus, Subaru has some ultra tight clearances here, and it took about 10 minutes of jiggling and jostling. Eventually you end up with this.



I chose not to reinstall the ram air, it seems like dead weight and a waste of bay space. Putting the fender clips back in place under the car took some guessing. I learned however, that you must first remove the larger black circle and insert it into the clip hole, then push the expanding pin in to the hole, locking it in place. The fog was a bit tricky as well, just took some patience to get the lower screws in place first. I also used this time to vertically align my fogs, as they where a bit off due to the rally incident I presume.

Total time: 2-3 hours, mainly due to guessing and muddling about. If I where to repeat this on a car, 45 minutes is reasonable.

The best part however, is driving it afterwards. I have an auto so I hold boost between gears, but the few times I do hear the BOV, it's magical. The other benefit is before I could rarely hear any actual engine revs pre-boost, now they come through very strong. I did not believe this big piece of plastic could cause so much, but the sound improvement is phenomenal. This takes next to no mechanical skill, is a great way to get into your engine bay, and gives your car a much more aggressive tone for free.

[Chilulu]

Just last week, on my 2006 WRX, I replaced my intake with an SPT, removed the silencer/snorkus and ram air (scoop), installed the fender plug, and installed ducting to route air to the existing opening where the stock airbox received air (from the silencer/snorkus). I sacrificed my fog lights to use one of the stock fog light panels for the duct entrance. I used two 75cm aluminum funnels for each end of the 1m ducting. So far so good, and the sound is great. I also have a GFB stealth BOV (with in-car adjustable controls for vent/recirc-control), and with 50/50 bypass/vent, the entire setup sounds awesome. No major backfires or negative effects on performance. If anything, the car feels more responsive!

[WRXcruiser]

i see online you can buy a new elbow to replace the complete snorkus piece, it claims it makes the air turn the corner better and stronger. i just cut the snorkus off and taped that hole up with duct tape, but im sure theres a little extra room in there doing my way. saves me 40 bucks from buying the new elbow piece though.

does anyone know if a BIG MAF (from Perrin SRI) can run on a stock intake setup w/o any harms? no cel code has thrown yet

[Emsbuff124]

my car sounds like a posche now that i took the air silencer delete out, but were do i go from here i getting an spt intake and heat shelid and im reading your post about pugs and extra hoses and im a bit confused maybe you guys can give me a bit more insite

[Superorb]

Stick with the stock airbox and BPV, there's no need to change any of those out till you're making well over 300whp and 20psi. You don't need the heatshield either unless you're putting an aftermarket downpipe on. Get stock plugs/wires unless you just want to throw money down the drain or you have a real reason to do so.

[stumpy06]

I took the silencer off and got like 30hp w00t. I smash Porsches all day long, now I just need some nawz and I'll kill lambos.

but seriously it does sound different, I like it no noticeable gain obviously.