How important is the heat shield above the exhaust muffler????? u-haul installed a curt hitch for me but they did not reinstall the heat shield back nor did they tell me they didnt reinstall it ! i mean they could of gave me the damn thing so i could install it myself, please any help would be great?

 

bump! not to be rude but really? noone knows?

 

Heheh. This forum doesn't get quite enough traffic to guarantee an instant answer. :-P

You have to mod/cut the heat shield for it to work; on how to install a C11496 hitch on a contemporary Honda Accord for visuals.

I had my mechanic do it, and there was a rotozip type tool involved. Well worth the $90 he charged me. Not to knock on UHaul, honest - they did a fine job with the hitch on my Ford. But if I look up the process and there's metal cutting involved, I take it to a place I know does metal work.

You can probably get away without it, but all that extra heat isn't going to do anything good. I'd say it's there for a reason and you should get it reinstalled. IMHO.

 

thank you for your reply, i was also told it is recommended to put back on by etrailers.com , uhaul discarded my heat shield i will have to call them today to fix it, because they never told me they didnt install the heat shield nor did they tell me they weren't gonna give me my heat shield after the hitch install

 

help: go back to uhaul and have them re-install it.

 

I agree. I did it myself and you have to cut it out a bit. They should buy you a replace part (both sides) and/or redo it.

 

I removed the heat shields when I had my magnaflows installed and never reinstalled them. That was over a year ago. No problems so far. I'm guessing they're there to prevent any heat damage to surrounding components but there really isn't anything there except the subframe and sheet metal below the trunk. I've been underneath to see if there's any visible signs of damage but nothing so far. I almost wonder if they're there just to prevent excessive heat from entering the cabin or trunk due to convection. I understand the heat shields on the pre-cat's but don't see a huge point in the heat shields above the mufflers.

 

My suspicion is that additional heating/cooling would damage/degrade the paint faster, causing cracks, corrosion, etc., sooner than one would prefer.

Personally, I don't want to mod my car, I just want it to not rot out from underneath me. I don't watch horror movies, I watch South Main Auto's youtube channel.