Im looking for opinions on whether or not I should leave out the heat shielding that goes under my car, above the exaust... you know, that big huge metel plate that covers half of the under carriage, and has to be removed to get the tranny out. I took mine out (to replace my tranny), and I was curious what y'all would have to say about me just leaving the crap out. Thanks

My car is an '83 GSL and I drive it a LOT.

 

i left it out
but i dont have cats

 

yeah mine still has cats, which i hope to remedy SOON... other than that do you ever have any heating problems without that big waste of weight?

 

Those things don't weigh that much. I would leave them on untill you get rid of the cats. The cats can get quite hot, same with the muffler. My car looked like it had an electrical fire where the cats were because the heat sheilds were gone. Now I have no cats so I don't have any heat sheilds.

 

alright cool.... now i just need to come up with a good excuse to get a mufflet shop to replace them with pipe.. with the least amount of prep from me

 

Say that the cats are clogged and that you will replace them when you get the money. You just don't want to damage your engine because of increased backpressure do you?

 

I just reinstalled mine today. Added an access port to grease the front u-joint. I recommend leaving them in to prevent heat from coming through the tranny tunnel. But then again up in OR it may be good.

Scott

 

I suggest you leave them in.

They do not weight much and they help prevent rusting of the floorboards.

Also on hot days they help keep you cabin cooler.

 

i would leave them on. lso, if you care enough, do a search on this. there was a discussion about this a while ago. it generated quite a few responses.

 

I removed them on the race car, EXCEPT for the one which protects the fuel tank. It just gave us more room for the custom coat wire hangers on our rigged downpipe. They are sitting in my garage in a heap... I would weight them to see exactly how much they weigh, but i think i need more than a bathroom scale. A few pounds at most i would guess.