help identifying this part/legacy

I have the '00 OBS which does not have the snorkus in the fender. but it does have these different sized chambers coming off the the intake tube. Are they to silence like the snorkus was on previous years. or do they work acousticaly to help improve the sound? they are on the under side so theyre hard to see in this picture.

Would removing them and blocking off the holes improve my air flow and help performance without fabricating a whole new pipe? maybe also add a velicity stack up behind the head lamp to replace the actual boxy inlet.

You have alot of things you can do with yours. Just stick a cone filter on the trottle body with the neccessary vacume lines routed into it, get one of the aftermarket intakes (cobb is the best) or run a replacement pipe from the airbox to the fender kinda like this:

 

That part of the intake on the newer MAP engines is used mostly just to get air into the large airbox and it does do some silencing (just unscrew the couple bolts and yank it off to see what it sounds like with just the airbox) Watter isnt as much of an inssue with the newer airboxes.