Exhaust Manifold Heatshield - Why?

[Hodag'stiva]

Rebuilding the engine on my 91 - so far it's been a pretty rewarding experience, I am still amazed at the level of engineering and ease of working on it even after fifteen years of ownership.

The exhaust manifold heat shield was held in place by two rusty bolts, neither one capable of being turned by a wrench. A few blows with a hammer and a cold chisel resolved that problem.

Now, this car has been shedding heat shields for the last ten years - the entire shield system along the exhaust system has rusted away and fallen off so I'm wondering - what's one more?

Has anybody put their 1.3L back together again without this heat shield, and if so, what has been the result? Is the paint blistering on your hood? Have the sparkplug wires melted? Is this only there to protect people from putting their hands directly on the exhaust manifold? Did their lawyers make them put it in?

Any direction would be great - I'm not so sure that this is going to be an easy part to replace - if I even have to.

B

[PaulLehr]

I ditched the one on my daily driver shortly after buying the car. It was rusted away around one of the bolts and would rattle when I was at idle. I have had no negative effects in the year or so since

[Guest]

had mine off for 2 years before I swapped to the B6 no burned wires or blistered paint..

[Hodag'stiva]

Thanks - that's kinda what I thought I'd hear.

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[darkdan]

Mine's been off for close to 2 years now. No problems.

[miami man]

i was thinking i could use my heat shield to warm up a sandwich in the winter time as long i use aluminum foil

[htchbck]

the little blue didn't have a heat shield even when I first bought her two years ago... no problems from lack of heat shield that I've been able to determine. My new BP has a heat shield on it though (cause its shiny and looks cool, lol)

[Hodag'stiva]

i was thinking i could use my heat shield to warm up a sandwich in the winter time as long i use aluminum foil

All my aluminum foil is tied up in headwear - but thanks for the insight. None of the cars I've ever owned have had heatshields on the manifold, and this one just seems extraneous.

If I could find/fabricate a new one, I'd put it on for the same reasons htchbck has outlined - but I think I can safely put her back together again without it now. Thanks!

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[69shelby]

Turn off the car now and park it!!! I could explode, the exhaust on a festiva can get to 9500F degrees!!! :lol:

[htchbck]

if ya want one I have one laying around someplace... good luck polishing the rust off it though :lol:

[Hodag'stiva]

Turn off the car now and park it!!! I could explode, the exhaust on a festiva can get to 9500F degrees!!! :lol:

Damn, that might make the plywood presently being employed as a cylinder head burst into flames :shock:

Neat thing about that - I made a cover for the engine block out of plywood by tracing the head gasket with my sabre saw. I dropped it in place (to keep out crap for the next degreasing) but of course, the head bolts are far too long to hold it down. I tripped on over to the hardware store over lunch to find some shorter bolts to keep my cap in place - couldn't find any at the three stores I visited.

Turns out that the engineers had the foresight to use a pretty rare 11mm bolt to hold it down. The world apparently runs on 10mm and 12mm bolts. (who knew?) Near as we can figure, this is their way of ensuring that some moron doesn't use bolts from Hardware Hank to hold his cylinder head down because he lost his original head bolts.

Clever, ain't they? Now going to cut some short scraps of PVC tubing to act as veerrrryyyyy loooong washers.

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[Vel Crowe]

I've been thinking about this very idea. I believe mine is rattling. I may just take it off........

[Hodag'stiva]

Not that anybody asked for an update . . .


The heat shield bolt heads were nicely rounded off utilizing a variety of wrenches. I especially recommend Vise Grips - they do a great deal more violence to the heads than RoboGrips.

So we ground off the heads, drilled and tapped new holes (we even kept them metric) and now we'll stuff the holes with stainless bolts until either another heatshield is acquired or fabricated. And if it never happens . . . that's fine, too. 8)

B