On Mon, 1 May 2017 14:37:26 -0700 (PDT), Tim
wrote:

4:22 PMMr. Luddite
- show quoted text -
Understand. My problem are the claims that K&N air filters increase
horsepower and performance. By themselves, I don't buy it. If you
change your 2 barrel Carter for a 4 barrel Holley and add a K&N ... sure.

When I was 16 or 17 my first car was a '62 Ford Galaxie. It was fun to
take the air cleaner assembly completely off and floor it to hear the
roar of the air entering the intake through carb. Car didn't go any
faster. It just made more noise.
....

Yup. A buddy did that to his dads 70 olds with a 45, only all he did was take the lid off the filter canister.. Problem was he floored it and the engine coughed and died. He knew the old man was going to kill him for blowing it up.
But when we raised the hood we were relieved at what actually happened. When he nailed it, that 700cfm "Rotten-Chester quadra-junk" sucked so hard it grabbed a generous amount of the fiber noise insulation attached to the underside of thehood and tried to eat it. It looked like the carb was full of black cotton candy.

With a flashlight and needle nose pliers we dug everything out at least the best we could, put it all together , and luckily it started and ran fine. he parked it. And not a word was said. Kid never did that again...

Once paper filters were on cars, the trick was you cut the sides and
"horn" off of the top cover and you got most of the sound, better
breathing and it still was filtered/flame arrested.
My old 53 Merc 312 had that charming Holly carb with the bowl centered
over the venturies. A carb fire would just keep going and going so the
flame arresting part was very important.