With Ceramic Coated Headers, do I still need the heat shield?

[Healeyalt]

I just replaced the head gasket on my FI 1976 and now I'm putting things back together. I'm wondering, if I go with the MSA ceramic headers, which supposedly decreases radiant heat by 40%, do I still need to put that ugly heat shield back under the intake manifold? To me, part of the attraction of headers besides flowing better and being lighter than the cast iron manifold, is they look nice, but with the stock heat shields, you can't see much of them.

Thanks

Gary

[madkaw]

The ceramic coating is pretty effective in reducing heat so you can probably forgoe the sheild, IMHO

[John Coffey]

I would media blast it, paint it with high temp paint, and put it back on.

[Sean240Z]

I have a '73 240z with SUs and the MSA Ceramic coated header (circa 2006). Obviously not your setup, but I still needed to include the heatshield and add a heatshieled extension under the rear SU to avoid vapour lock. My $0.02.

[240260280z]

John Coffey has a post somewhere about the better coatings and their efficiency. I think he mentioned internal coating too.

Any decrease in manifold heat is usually a good thing except where it is engineered for icing prevention, or for boiling off unwanted fuel accumulation.

[Zed Head]

Don't forget that many of the ceramic coatings burn off over time. Lots of gimmicky stuff out there.

You could go with transparent aluminum. I saw it on Star Trek. Or glass with a low E reflective coating.

[siteunseen]

After reading about excessive heat I decided to clean mine and paint them with high heat aluminum rattle can. VHT Flameproof for headers. Some serious heat comes off my header runners but above the shield it's not hot at all, my fuel rail is even cool to the touch, all your wiring and injectors will last longer if you use them I would think. At least use the horizontal one, IMO. You can put it on afterwards if you decide not to use them now, I took mine back off to paint it satin black. And I had to trim the vertical one for mine.

[Zed Head]

SU is showing another possibility, which would actually be generally useful. A reflective surface somewhere on the fenderwell. I use a mirror quite often to look around under the manifold and various other places. It would be nice to have something permanently in place. You could even go further and point some LEDs up under there. Call it a maintenance inspection tool.

[Healeyalt]

Thanks guys. Lots of good points. I already had the heat shields sand blasted and so I guess I'll paint them with some of that high temp paint and then back they'll go. To keep things above the shield as cool as possible, I might even buy some of this heat reflective sheeting from Advanced Auto to stick to the under side; cooler intake = denser air charge = more power.

Design Engineering Reflect-A-Cool - Heat Reflective Tape 12" x 24" 010461: Buy best Exhaust Heat Shields & Wraps at Advance Auto Parts

[RIP260Z]

A heat shield can be good way also of deflecting the small chance of a fuel leak away from your headers....

[TomoHawk]

When I had my heat shields out, I had them 'painted' with a high-heat coating. It's basically a painted-on powder coating. I chose the chrome powder, and it came out really nice, like polished aluminum.

[TomoHawk]

Speaking of heat shields, it seems to me that my right foot gets kind of warm in the summer when driving in the city. I think it's because the exhaust pipe runs near the body next to the gas pedal. I was thinking of wrapping the exhaust tube in that area with a heat-wrap. Should that help cool things?