I have heard that many cars have some piece of plastic in the stock air intake piping. supposedly they can be simply cut out and the intake will be slightly deeper sounding. is there a piece like this in the 96 camaro v6?
Your car, being a '96 may have been altered. The only way to know for sure what you've got in your air intake is to look.
There is nothing you can cut out to make it sound good without causing some damage.
usually its the design of the hose itself that silences the intake. as your intake valves open the air begins to rush towards the cylinder. and then that valve slams shut in the airs face and that air needs somewhere to step back into, or it exits the intake by going back through the air filter and creates the extra noise you hear with most aftermarket intake setups. typically the plastic tube between your filter box and the throttle body is ridged, like most household or shop vacuum hoses. those ridges provide somewhere for the air to step off to the side into instead of rushing back out past your filter. some of them may also have chambers sticking out to the side of the intake tube, those chambers serve the same function. BTW, with newer cars, most of those cold air intake kits are rip off's. you can put a good high flow kn filter in your stock filter box, which draws air from outside of the vehicle where it is just as cold as it can be, and have all the same benefits without the extra noise. and if you want the noise, you just replace the tube between the filter box and the motor. if you replace your stock tube with any straight tubing that doesnt have anywhere but the motor or the filter for air to go, your intake will be louder. i have a buddy who works at an exhuast shop, he made his cold air intake out of the same steel pipes he used for exhuast systems. actually made two of them, one with 2 diameter and one with 2.5 diameter and track tested them on his car, i think he found the 2 worked better for his specific setup.
