RE Fiat-Abarth 124 16v under dev

[miro-1980]

Dear Guy,

How effective is the thermal guard ( aluminum box over the exhaust manifold ).

Would you advise some sort of tempt guard be used ?

[Guy Croft]

Sorry - I can't really comment.

Mick knows his car better than I do (natually, having owned it since the 80's) and I'm sure he knows all about coatings and wraps. He's a member here so I will ask him if he can perhaps find a moment to remark on it.

GC

[mickwood]

Dont think you need heat shields on 8 valve cars.

Exhaust on this engine ran really hot, and was an unusual pattern that balanced primaries by sweeping upwards before going down.

The first time we ran it, (without any thermal protection) it not only cooked the bonnet (fortunately made out of fre retardent GRP) causing paint to blister on top surface, it also burned the bulkhead paint, cooked the coil and melted the oil breather.

The works cars had similar problems and not only ducted air away (through to RH front wing duct) they also wrapped the pipes to heater in an asbestos (!) sleeve, and similarly wrapped the engine mounts.

This alloy heat shield was made back in the early 90's, when heat shielding was more crude

I recently replaced it with ceramic wrapping but left the shield in place to provide added protection to expansion tank (now refitted where oil catch tank is in this photo) and coil.

However that is all an interim measure as I am going to rebuild car back to its 75 spec now, with coils in the cockpit area, and with the wing ducting re-opened.

I will stick with the Ceramic Wrap, but not bother with the heat shield

Mick

served a few purposes - notably protecting We originally made this aluminium heat shield to