Do you have a heat shield on the headers?

[scotty81]

Hi everyone,

 

Recently bought a 2011 Legacy for our family. So wanted to ask you something. Under the hood (when the previous owner popped it) I noticed wrapping on the exhaust header. First I thought that something went wrong about it and he's kinda hiding something with it. But he told me that he's using that heatshield. It's like soft foil-finished cover with bubbles on it, and it's held with clamps. he took it off as I asked, since wanted to make sure everything's cool there. Then, he put it back in, saying that it allows keeping the heat in the exhaust, which helps reducing temperature under the hood... Which is kinda good for performance ....

 

Honestly, never heared of that. Is any of you guys using this stuff? Does it really work? Also, if you were me, would you still keep that heat shield?

Any thoughts appreciated!!!

[GC8E2DD]

Could you take a photo of it, upload to photobucket/flickr/whatever and post the link?

[Andy_Mac]

Was it just the tubing underneath it or was the stock heatshield still there? 

[scotty81]

I will have to ask my son help me with it, as I've got a broken camera on my cell. Will post shortly this week.

As for the heatshield, it's some soft kind of wrapping, not a tube or something... Found something similar in the web, what I've got is something like this - https://www.carid.com/exhaust-heat-shields/ , 4th from top. Wanted to get a pic copied but the site says I may not do that... 

Anyways, hope will get a picture of what I've got and will show you guys exactly what's under the hood. Just curious, never thought that this wrap will do something good to the Legacy... 

[sobanoodle]

9 minutes ago, scotty81 said:

I will have to ask my son help me with it, as I've got a broken camera on my cell. Will post shortly this week.

As for the heatshield, it's some soft kind of wrapping, not a tube or something... Found something similar in the web, what I've got is something like this - https://www.carid.com/exhaust-heat-shields/ , 4th from top. Wanted to get a pic copied but the site says I may not do that... 

Anyways, hope will get a picture of what I've got and will show you guys exactly what's under the hood. Just curious, never thought that this wrap will do something good to the Legacy... 

Curious - is it a turbo legacy or non-turbo 2.5?

[scotty81]

It's just naturally aspirated 2.5 L, 2011....

[boon]

The factory header has a heatshield normally. If you bash it on something you can break the mounts and then it makes a horrible noise, maybe that's the case here? Or have they wrapped over the factory heatshield?

On a turbo vehicle it's beneficial to keep the heat in to maintain the exhaust energy... but on a NA car it won't do S*** except slightly reduce engine bay temps.

 

I've been driving round for about 4 years with no heatwrap/shielding on mine and nothing bad has happened....

[scotty81]

Then I guess I will remove it, as I totally do not like it, and if it won't do any good to me, don't see a reason to keep the shield. By the way, I assume that the previous owner simply removed the OE shield, as you say. And decided to put this 'wrap' on clamps instead.

Thanks for replying, guys. Now at least have an idea on what it is for.

[GC8E2DD]

Get a photo and try selling it on here. Might be useful stuff for a weekend racer.

[scotty81]

Haha nice idea. Will ask my son get a pic for me. Hopefully he won't take the shield, as he was already thinking whether it will work on his Civic.

[sobanoodle]

I'd be careful with running no heat shields at all. 

I run custom headers without any shields or wrap at all and ended up with "cooked" steering boots on my old 3.0. Completely different design of headers though so you might be fine.