Is it safe for me to drive around with the stock headers on without it's heatshield? Will I do any damage to the hood? I plan on polishing my headers and leaving the heat shield off.

 

should be fine,it will be a little less pretty under the hood......stock header even polished is not pretty to see........but several guys around here have theirs off........and everyone with header does not have it with no problems.

 

Should be fine. The stock one is pretty ugly and rusty looking, so that would be the only concern if you care about that.

 

not unless you do what this guy did because it looks pretty clean if you ask me...

https://www.scionlife.com/forums/vie...953&highlight=

 

^

how that is one clean OEM header. makes me want to do it but no time or other car to use while i polish

 

i might make it a weekend project?

 

I was polishing the heatshield just for kicks lol (I actually had a different idea) and it's a pain in the "rear"!!! try a weeklong project

 

does that look clean? yes it does...but on the flip side...that is polished BARE metal..and over time what does bare metal do? rust like hell. lol.

Before I got performance headers for my 06 and 08 tC's... I simply prepped the heat shield on my 06 for paint...and used a high temp engine block enamel paint on it...it looked nice and held up well.....then I went the aftermarket performance header route and ditched all the stock parts.

 

Hey mouse what grit sand paper did you use on the heat shield? I have been wanting to do that.

 

I believe I started with lower grit like around 2-300...to first "rough up" the surface...then made it a little finer so the sanding marks wouldn't show through...think I finished off around 800ish.... then used the high temp enamel engine block paint....hope that helps...if you need specific tips...just pm me bro

 

I hit the heatshield with 400, then 1K then 2K and used Hope's polish. I plan to paint the heatshield black and polish the headers behind revealing a chrome shine behind the black heatshield.

 

^^That is a pretty good idea!

 

decided to do mine not done yet.

 

how long did that take you, and all by hand?

 

I sanded it by hand and polished it with a drill. It's taken me so far 3 hrs to do that much and i'm not even done yet. I'm just taking a break while the battery in my drill recharges.

 

id say it looks pretty nice.

 

ive had mine off for 9K miles.
no problems yet.

i went to the dealer and the tech's started to give me a hard time because "it wuld be to hot under the hood"

i just laughed and said, what about the guys who run turbos...?

they both just looked at me stumped.

oh, and get ready for everyone to ask you what kinds of "headers" you have. lol

 

yup i still vote stock header to be polished than getting aftermarket one.. or polish the heatshield for daily use

 

Can't really get behind the pipes where the plate thing is lol.

 

Kinda had the same idea. Didn't wanna go through all the work to polish down the header, cause I've been planning on putting in a DC one, so i figured I'd just do the heatshield. was pretty quick and painless, took me about an hour.





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