Besides the 2.3L Throttle Body Swap, is there anything else that you can swap in with little modifications to gain more power?
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I hear that removing the intake silencer, if so equipped, can be noticable depending upon the size of the silencer and it's inherent restriction. I haven't done this yet, but I plan to check it out more thoroughly. I haven't had mine out yet, but from the shape, it looks to be as much of a water separator as a "silcencer".
Some have also moved or otherwise "tricked" their intake-air-temperature sensor to force the engine to run rich. This makes the engine always err on the side of "more gas than it can possibly burn" rather than using the computer-calculated stoichiometric combustion ratio of 14.6 to 1. This will also cause engines to have a large increase in carbon and other buildups, reduce fuel economy across the board, can potentially reduce performance, and can make the car generally run very poorly, etc. I don't recommend doing this "mod".
More on the silencers.... i have no clue about that one.
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After pulling mine out, it's technically a water separator and not really a "silencer" as people call it (some call it a water bong). If your car has one, you can find it by following the intake from the engine and past the filter. They're almost always some type of U-bend that water can't go up, with a hole in the bottom for the water to drain out of.
You can remove pretty much anything that's upstream of the air filter, but you want to be careful not to splash through any puddles or otherwise get water into the intake or you can hydrolock or even ruin the engine. But that probably won't happen.
On my 98 Cavalier 2.2, it's in the lefthand side of the front bumper. It looked like a weird U bend, with another large bulbous shape on the bottom of the U bend. When looking into the engine bay, it's behind the wiper fluid resevoir where you can't really see it. It begins where the intake goes from the air filter and goes downward through the sheet metal. This will be the point where the top of the separator pipe goes fits into the other intake pipe.
I got it out by taking off the right front wheel and the front piece of the inner fender well liner. There was one or two 11mm bolts (one of which is shared with the wiper fluid tank), a couple of push fastener things, and another bar which appeared to be a support for the front bumper which had 2 bolts in it. After removing the water separator, I put all of the bolts and fasteners back on the car. It wasn't too hard to figure out what was holding it into the car, but having a set of small hands to fit up into the bumper for the forward-most bolt can help.
I haven't noticed difference in performance, but with other modifcations it might make a small difference, and it might improve fuel economy anyway. It might sound a little better, but maybe that's just in my head. Now removing the water separator on some cars, say a v6 Fiero, makes an insane difference in sound and a small but noticable performance increase.
I can't imagine that a "cold air" intake would be any better for a lowly 2.2 (no offense intended) than doing this unless one had some other more significant modifications. By leaving the rest of the intake intact, it's still breathing from the fender away from the engine and is actually almost a factory cold air intake. The only true CAI would be one that's more reasonably sealed from the engine bay, like a stock Fiero side intake, or a very low bottom breather like the type SLP used to sell for F-bodies.
removing the intake silencer does NOTHING for performance, likewise with the iat "trick."
if you want to pick up horsepower, you have to spend some money.
a small upgrade for a 2200 which will free up a small bit of power (beside the modifications that you already have) would be to upgrade to a roller valvetrain. go to howellautomotive.com and check out crane 1.6:1 goldrace rockers.
if you want to want to be able to run with ecotecs and quad4s, youre really gonna need to bump up your compression, have some headwork done, buy a big cam, and get a good tune.
