lots of guys cut them like this. It’s a pretty common mod, not sure if there’s downside to it, possibly in the low rpms and part throttle, but these intakes come with the divider cut like this from the factory on small block Chevy edelbrock air gap intakes, so edelbrock must have figured it was more beneficial to do I would think. There’s at least one dyno video on YouTube showing it was a helpful mod on the dyno at lower rpms at full throttle. I’ll post it below.
