You can do what like I did and take the whole box out. Its not really necessary, I was going to make my own but I abandoned that idea and now I have "different" plans so I'm just going to keep it how it is right now. Ideally you would probably want to go with a CAI, AEM, Iceman, K&N, etc. Something that gets the filter out of the engine bay...my filter gets warm when my cars been running. But to answer your question, you don't have to take the air box out like I did. You can just pop the top and switch filters. If you leave the top off the air box or take it out completely all together your car will be much louder, you'll actually hear your car sucking up air.

 

yeah if you want your car to get loud, just rip the silencer box (technical term) out of the fenderwell, and leave the snorkel from your stock air box going into the fenderwell, after this is completed you have made a ghetto cai, and you can still here the air sucking into the engine, now, go by a piece of aluminum 3" tubing from a muffler shop and stick it in place of the piece that goes between your throttle body and intake manifold, and u just put aem out of business and got the same resuly by leaving the top on your airbox and putting a k&n air filter in. I would have done that if i would have thought about it before putting in my aem cai....