Heat shield: Important, or just for giggles?

[nfpgasmask]

OK, this morning I ripped off what was left of my big long passenger side sheild. It drove me nuts all the way to and from Moab.



PHO2GR4, did you call St. Charles yet? I am going to call them Monday and see if I can get a replacement.

I have been thumbing through my parts catalog to try to get a part number but I am having no luck. Does anyone know the proper Isuzu term for this part? Nothing is coming up in the index under "heat", "heat sheild" or "insulator". Any other key words I should look for? Or better yet, what "section" of the vehicle would this most likely be under? Chassis? Frame? Emission system?

Thanks - Bart

[CrnCnn]

So is this the piece that makes me feel "not so cool" when someone is checkin out the VX, then all of the sudden rattle rattle

[PHO2GR4]

Bart, if you can believe it, the remains of MY heat shield looked much worse than yours!

I've driven close to 3000 miles across searing desert heat for 10 hours at a stretch with no obvious problems, though. I wonder what this part actually does? Is it like a spleen, which can be removed without causing any bad issues?

[Dino]

Want a mechanics input... well here it is anyway!

Heat shields are there to protect things surrounding that super-hot exhaust pipe! It's fine moving down the road with air rushing by, but when a vehicle gets shut down with a super-heated exhaust, the heat rises and super-heats your floorboards and other bits that are nearby that don't take well to repeated, intense, heat!

It's best to try to keep them on.
If they're rattling, any competent muffler shop's welder-on-duty should be able to tack weld them back in place.

...and there's me 2 cents.

[Joe Isuzu]

I'm definitely not the only one on this apparently, after I got mine I was very annoyed at the rattling that would happen when the car was idling, I traced it down to the heat shield and the u-bolt (right term?) had rusted, the shield wasn't in great shape but it was mostly there and I simply replaced the bolt so it wasn't sitting on the exhaust pipe, simple enough solution but sometimes I fear looking underneath my VX b/c I see a lot of rusty looking emissions equipment that soon looks like it will need to be replaced....
cha-ching!

[Knigh7s]

I have this habbit of driving next to brick fences, or wall of some sort that reflect sound back towards the car while driving. I just drop the passanger window just enough to where the wind noise isn't so loud.

Well to come to my point. I just had gotten off work the other night and have to drive through a tunnel to get home. I pulled to the far right and dropped the window down a bit. And to my suprise... an annoyingly LOUD rattle (sometimes I could hear the rattle with windows closed, but very faint, but disappears when I concentrate on that sound).

My heat sheilds are rusted up pretty bad.

(after removing the old rusted pieces) Couldn't I just wrap this around it, then maybe this , and tie it down with these ?

It could prevent it from any further rust/rattles.... ...

[/end novel]

[tom4bren]

I think Dino hit the nail on the head. The heat shield does not affect performance and is there mostly for safety. I haven't had any problem with it on my VX yet (but then I've only been a member for a short while and preferred to concentrate on the other VX SNAFUs first - windows, CVs). I've removed most of the heat shields from my TLC over the years (as each succombed to cancer - believe it or not there were six). No problems since. Now for the horror story though - I have heard of carpet melting because the exhaust system got too hot close to the underbelly.

I would not try for a factory replacement. You should be able to find a shop that could fab something up for you @ less $$$ and would actually last longer. Metal tape will work but my experience on an old Dodge P'up was that it is very temporary.

I've seen some ceramic coatings in the past but that was very long ago and probably are very $$$. I've also seen some fiber wrap for exhaust but again long ago and very $$$ - it also wasn't recommended as it would PROMOTE rust.

I'd recommend some leg work to find a small shop with a good welder that could fab something up for you (I'm lucky - I found such a place). Don't bother with the big chain shops. Find JoeBillyJimBob who operates out of uncle Mikey's garage. The big shops probably won't touch a job like that for liability reasons.

[nfpgasmask]

Last night I put my heat sheilds back on. I went to Home Depot and picked up 4 pipe clamps, ended up using 3 of them, but I was able to get the sheilds back on nice & tight. I still have one rattling down there that I need to find and clamp on better.

Bart

[Kenny]

Are you sure it's a heat shield rattle - did it go away when you took off the shields?

I thought I had a heat shield rattle and hoped it would go away with the new exhaust system since the new system doesn't re-use the shields. It didn't, we found that it was an O2 sensor that rang like a bell when tapped - that was the rattle I heard. I replaced it and the rattle went away.

But now I have another one when I go over bumps.... another O2 sensor? dunno yet, too lazy and exhausted from Moab to look right now...