Neptune Green, seeing that you live in Rosamond sure brings back a lot of great memories for me. I was an AMA District 37 desert racer from 1968 through 2001 and drove by Rosamond hundreds of times on the way to and from the races. The California desert is a great place!
With regard to improving the breathing on your truck, the negative comments you got do not match my experiences. It's amazing how some people cling to the past with a death grip rather than try something new.
I modified the air intakes on both my '36 Chevy pickup and '71 Dodge van that I bought new and still have.
On the '36 there is a pancake looking air cleaner that originally had a metal mesh "filter". There is no way that coarse metal mesh can exclude fine dust that would act as a grinding compound inside the engine. I found a NAPA pleated paper air filter element that was a direct replacement for the metal mesh.
Oil bath air filters work by slamming the air flow against the oil embedding the dirt in the oil and causing the air flow to reverse direction. That's about as far from efficient laminar air flow as you can possibly get and does clean the air but also gives the engine asthma. Eliminating turbulent flow in favor of laminar flow improves performance. No matter how primitive an engine is, if it can breathe easier it can't help but run better.
How do I know that improving air flow into a stock engine improves performance? It's from Desert racing again. To get to the races in Lucerne Valley I used to drive my van over Cajon Pass, elevation about 4200 feet. The last few miles approaching the pass from the south are really steep and the van had to work hard hauling my family and the race bikes and pulling our little travel trailer, especially if there was a head wind.
As an experiment, I built a fresh air intake that picked up cooler air in front of the radiator and ducted it to the air cleaner snorkel. My van's speed cresting Cajon Pass immediatly increased and the added power was also very noticable while pulling the trailer into a headwind. The air flow was so much increased that larger carburetor jets were required to eliminate pinging after installing the cold air intake.
I would encourage you to use your ingenuity in making any improvements you can and see how they work out for you. It's fun!
I just converted my '36 pickup from 4.11 to 3.55 gears after being told by the "experts" that it couldn't be done. There is a detailed write up on that conversion with a lot of pictures on the 1936 Chevy Owners online forum.
