Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Heat Shield Question

What makes the best homemade heatshield? I've heard metal one's dont work as well as other materials. I think i saw somewhere on here that a waste basket works??i dunno. i'd appreciate any ideas.

I JUST finished mine, like 2 minutes ago. used a small rubbermaid trashcan. I hear a material called lexan (found at home depot) works well too.

How big and how did u install it

I can see how a rubbermade trashcan could work well. Also, metal is fine to use IF you insulate it. I fabricated mine out of sheet metal, and then padded each side of the metal with a half inch of good foam and then covered it in black vinyl, for a total of one inch thick foam. It works very well, i posted on the results several years ago, but the intake temp was at least 30 degrees F cooler than the engine bay.

The disadvantage to using metal is that it takes a good bit of fabrication work and bracket making.

I'll try to find pics, the server isn't working right now

Here are some of the pics:

heat shield pics

Here are mine, everyone can tell me metal wont work until they are blue in the face. Ive tested for myself, and it works quite well. Fits snug enough to the hood, and the inside has a layer of alumninum tape to help insulate.

The idea was to block off *most* of the hot air, not seal the filter into a chamber.







Wonder if anyone would buy something like this. Too bad Dtec probably ruined any chance of someone selling heatsheilds.

cst99 is right... One made from metal takes alot of work to fab together. I was going to make a bunch of these for some people, but decided aganist it since it was so labor intensive. Here's a library, hosted thankfully by Hetfield, that contains a ton of pictures that I have taken of my heatsheild. I used aluminum and I must say that it works really well. You would think it would bake the filter, in stop and go traffic, but it really doesn't. The filter is pretty much cold, to the touch, at all times.

My opinion... For the money, you would be better off getting a GMK intake rather just a heatsheild. That is unless you are willing to build one of these. Reason is, because the labor involded in making one of these merits the price at about what a GMK intake would cost. If you are willing to do the work yourself, I feel that you would get better results from this style heatsheild... hands down.

So all in all... it's a matter of what you are willing to do yourself compared to the money you are willing to spend.

I think that looks great, any chance you could post all dimensions? I have made three different HS for my SVT and one for my SE, and revise each one trying to make it better. Looks like you have developed a great part.

Mark

I might post the dimensions, Id have to go measure them tho. i still have my little cardboard mock up too, so might be easier to measure that.

Im going to look into getting the basic shape cut out in large quantities, perhaps people would be interested.