I removed that, too, and it does open it up a lot, but none of it showed up in my track times. I'm not saying to not bother to do it, just don't sink a lot of money into it because you won't see a big difference if any. It's not a cost effective mod unless your pumping lots of HP from the motor. Every little bit helps but this isn't a big performance gainer, at least that's been my experience.