Mine is a 3/00 also. I agree, that extra cover over the intake looks like a bit of a kludge.

I used an Exacto knife to tediousy cut the chads out as squares - it took 3 hours.

I also plugged up the large round holes leading to the inner fender area (visible thru the hood hinge openings.) For the left you can reach from the top and apply duct tape, for the right I removed the wheel well liner and placed a block of closed-cell foam up against the hole.

Every step has made a noticible improvement.