While in the middle of an engine rebuild, I noticed a nice hole in the housing for the evaporator right above the exhaust header. Damage appears to be blunt force trauma rather than heat but did notice discoloration due to heat. During the repair phase, I decided to add some upgrades to the protect from heat given headers are part of the rebuild.


Upgrades:
1. Used Fiberglass resin to coat the heat bearing side of the housing with exhaust header wrap.
2. Fabricated a heat shield from 16 gauge steel. This was made in 5 pieces and welded. I'm humble enough to grind to perfection.
3. Painted heat shield with high temp header paint, then covered with reflective coating which had a thin sheet of heat resistant material sandwiched in between.
4. Applied remaining heat resistant film to remaining lower half of evaporator housing.
5. Final assembly sits ~1/4 above the housing.


Results are attached in pictures. This should provide sufficient heat protection above the header.

 

great work!!

 

Nice work, how hard was it to make the heat shield and time? Did you weld it together? Sorry for all the questions but I really like it, thinking of doing one.

 

Thanks for the feedback. It took about 2 days to finish (4-5 hours/day). Applying the fiberglass resin with the header wrap was easy but messy until it cured. Grinder cleaned up the edges quickly. In Pic 2 you can see the metal heat shield formed from 5 pieces. I started from the top with a 3" wide piece of 16 gauge steel and bent, check, re-bent until close enough, working my way down. Paper cutouts were used to transfer the compound curves to metal for bending. Tack weld, check, adjust as required. I left the edges raw until the final form was in place and then welded all seams both sides, cut and grind the seams & outer edges to finish. The metal heat soaked pretty quick so I had to go slow to avoid blowing through the joints. High temp paint to both sides, dry, and apply sticky back heat wrap from Autozone. Finished up by drilling mounting holes and using washers to offset.

 

Nice job for sure.