anyone running their car with the heat shield off? My manifold had a crack in it, and I replaced it with another stock manifold. Since then 96-97 civics are known for cracks on their manifolds ( i assume due to heat) . Should I just take off my heat shield so the heat can dissipate better? any negative effects?

 

leave the heat shield in place. you actually want to keep as much heat in you exhaust stream as possible. it speeds up the spent gases and helps keep engine bay temps down.

 

seems to make sense in theory, but doesn't seem like less heat would slow the air flow that much....

 

:thinking: :questioningjoo:

 

well i bought a tranny... and got that with it

 

it is ther to keep heat out of the engine bay
keep it there
it will also increase the temp of you coolent

 

put a header on that thing yo..

 

I drove around in my old '92 Integra with no heat shields with no ill effects... until I totalled it.

The main purpose of the shields is to keep the heat out of the engine bay, that's it. The reason they crack is either the basic weakness of cast iron (not suprising) or a poor casting design (unusual for Honda.) Cast iron isn't very strong, I know quite a few cars that have issues with cracking cast iron parts (6G Civics, 1G DSM's, any cast iron turbo manifold, etc)

 

too bad you could have had Honda replace your manifold for free (assuming you have under 150k miles) :thinking:

 

201,000 miles