Heat Shield

[Ryan Trester]

The small heat shield a little after the cat(I think on the I pipe)is rattling like crazy and I am wondering if I can just take it off or if I should replace it.

[Jerriko]

I guess it would be your preference but here's a couple of ways of looking at it. I don't like heat shields so I take almost all of them off. I figure that while you are in motion, there is enough current underneath your vehicle to cool the exhaust. When your vehicle is not moving, the engine temp drops and so does the temp of your exhaust pipes, dramatically. That's why GM moved the O2 sensors in the exhaust manifolds or use heated O2 sensors. Anyways, the reason they put those shields there is to keep the underbody of the car from heating up. Heat destroys the paint (like GM couldn't use high temp paint) and then rust sets in or I have heard of an outlandish story of a car actually catching on fire because of missing heat shields. The problem w/ heat shields is that they still get hot and the brackets that the shields attach to get rusted because of the heat. And then they make that horrible noise. If it was my car, I would remove them.
Jim