Heat Shield over muffler... Do I need it?

Do you think I still need the factory heat shield thats directly above the muffler? I'm painting the underbody of the car and have to take this off anyway. I was just thinking do I really need to put it back on?

The purpose was just to keep the muffler heat out of the hatchback right? I've since replaced the original muffler with a 3" Flowmaster and there are hooker ceramic headers on the car as well. So the exhaust gets pretty hot, but I'm not sure if I should be so worried that I need to keep the shield on.

Any opinions? :blah:

I would keep it on. Just in case.

the gas tank is up there, I would keep it

For the reasons above keep it.

Hmmm...

So you guys really think it could heat up the gas tank? So much that you'd be concerned about it?

I used to have a 86 Camaro that had a heat shield over the CAT, but it rusted out and started to rattle. After the rattle I removed it and drove it around for a good 3 years after with no problems. I guess I kinda figured the same would apply here.

But if the collective opinion is to keep it on then I guess I can put it back after the painting is done. I just hate to go a wreck the nice look I'll have goin' on underneath. :irk:

Oh well.

The engineers that went to scool for that kind of thing thought they needed it when they designed the car, so I would say it's needed. Keep it, you may have just been lucky with the cat shield, i've seen car burn-up setting in traffic because that shield(cat) was missing. Once that carpet starts to burn it gets real smokey inside that car,very quickly.

I agree with everyone else, keep it in place for safety reasons.

I've removed it on a few. It won't blow up the gas tank or anything. But, you might as well leave it there.

You could always paint it to match! :cool:

I'm resurrecting an old thread here. I too am wondering about how safe it is to remove because I took mine off yesterday. I actually removed all the heat shielding from under the car (no CAT). The reason why I yanked it all is because the car had a TERRIBLE rattle when accelerating past 2k RPMs since installing my turndowns out of the muffler. I checked and all of the screws were still in place. I tried to shove shims and wood blocks underneath the shielding in different locations so that the rattle would stop but it didn't help. Now that the shielding is gone the noise is gone as well. Ahhhhh, peace and quiet once again. I'm a little concerned about safety though and I'm curious who else has done this and if it could heat up the gas tank enough to cause issues.

I was told by a close friend that turn downs would cause everything in the car to eventually rattle and it would drive me crazy. I didn't listen. He was right.

Having survived an Fbody fire started by an exhaust leak under the passenger floor pan, I'd
recommend that you keep all the protection you can get that close to the motor.
There's just nothing like looking over and seeing your passenger seat engulfed in flames and
ttops dripping down while you try to negotiate your way to the shoulder on the interstate at rush hour.
The cat gets very hot.

Tighten up the bolts that hold the shield in place.
IIRC, there were quite a few on that particular section.

Keep the heat shield and just paint it with some Hi Temp. paint!