To heat shiled or not to heat shield ?

[BoeingMan]

Originally Posted by GTS Bruce

There are well known Viper shops that will refuse to work on a Viper W/O shields due to possible liability problems they may be charged with when the car burns up at a later time. GTS Bruce

Are you serious? Vipers have actually caught fire and burned up just because they had no shileds? Wow.

[Dv8tor]

I'll do headers soon and since I live in Florida, I'm definately getting some aftermarket heat shields. The stock heat shields are fugly. I recall seeing a few photos of an engine bay with no heat shields and there were several components melted bad.

[BoeingMan]

OK I have installed my Bellengar headers without the heat shileds and have run the car three seperate times. The last time was yesterday and it was through stop and go traffic and on the highway.

The engine bay defitnately runs cooler than stock and cools down quicker as well when the engine is shutdown. There are a few lines on both sides of the headers, that due to their proximity of about one to two inches, do get hot (not searing hot just hot). I am instaling aluminized insulating sleeves around these and this should eliminate this problem.

The small metal bulkhead that makes up part of the HVAC structure facing the headers gets hot too but I temporarily taped some doubled over aluminum foil and that took care of that problem. As a permanent fix, I am going to press on some aluminized fabric against both these areas. It's aluminum on one side and thin fabric on the other. It looks a lot nicer than it sounds.

Anyway the power steering pump, and the ac compressor, did not feel unusally hot. Did not get a chance to feel the starter motor, but I suspect it will be ok too being that it is even further away than the two components listed above.

The 02 sensors and the associated wiring is absolutely OK. The spark plug boots and the ignition wiring were not hot at all and only slightly warm. Other wiring around the enigne was fine as well.

I have not installed the HVAC motor cover yet , though, the motor is in place. The plastic structure was warm but I could leave my hand on it and not have to pull away in pain and not warm enough to deform the plastic either. The metal clips were hot though so I covered those with a little aluminum tape and not an issue any more.

Now the top of the HVAC assembly (wich I have not installed yet) seems to be made out of a thiner wall palstic. After installing it in a day or two, I will be really looking out to see if it gets hot enough to want to distort in anyway. If it does, I will be shieldng it with some of the same refelctive aluminized material as I will be putting on the bulkheads. I don't anticipate any problems with it though.


Well there it is guys my real time review on wether the heat shields are essential or not. On these Belengers, I believe running them without 'factroy-like' heatshields is highly managleble with only a minimum of protection.

(note: belengars installed along with high flow cats and cat back exhaust)

I hope this helps someone.

Matt