I want to do something, cleaning wise, with the heat shield that covers the exhaust manifold on my Mk2. It looks like it is either galvanised or painted. Either way, It needs something doing to it as I am slowly cleaning up the engine bay of my car.
Some I have seen have been painted in heat resistant silver. Can it be polished? Would it rust if I tried?
I removed mine, (be careful undoing the bolts as they can be a bit seized) and polished it with a buffing wheel, and finished it off with Autosol.
As long as it’s not too pitted with rust spots, it should come up fairly shiny…
Now THATS just what I want to achieve, very nice job Risingsun
. I have the polishing kit to be able to do that too.
I have already tried to remove the bolts, 6 of the seven are OK, but the seventh, (and its the hardest to get at, the bottom one) has been rounded over ad it also has the O2 sensor cable bracket attached to it too. I’ve bought a 10mm socket with a kind of helical inside that is supposed to be able to remove damaged bolts. We shall see. I’ve bought some new bolts too just in case…
As a by the by, how have you cleaned your intake manifold? I dont want to even attempt to polish mine, the casting is too rough and would need a lot of rubbing down.
I fitted my polished and painted exhaust heat shield cover today and am quite pleased with how it turned out
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Here are some pictures…
The inside of the exhaust shield prior to rubbing down and painting
The inside after it was painted. I used heat resistant, (400C ali metal paint that I got from work).
The outside after polishing. There is still some pitting unfortunately but I’m quite happy with the final result. Its in keeping with my desired, “old aero” look.
And fitted to the car.
Another shot fitted.
Slowly getting there I think…
And the milion dollar question is… How long did it lasted after polishing?? Is it permanent or it fades out after some time??
I would not try to take that 10mm AF bolt off with any kind of spanner as it may take the stud with it due to age and all those temperature cycles but you never know it may come off.
I would spend some time grinding or junior hack sawing the nut off, clean up the stud and put a new nut on.