I recently obtained a fibreglass belly pan to replace the broken and cracked plastic belly pan on my 3XW. I can understand why the plastic factory belly pans require heat shielding but I'm not convinced that a fibreglass belly pan requires it, so I would appreciate members thoughts on this matter.
I've searched the forum and while there are one or two threads about heat shields, they refer to OEM belly pans.
Stainesy
I think I'd install it simply as a matte of course. Why not? It's cheap enough, and may serve other purposes such as vibration dampening -not sure. If it were a hundreds of dollars decision I may take pause, but given that you can likely do it for, maybe $20, I don't think I'd not do it...
My $0.02
Dan
I had a caterham super 7 for a few years. That was fibreglass and the manifold and block was less that an inch away in places, never had a problem! If your worried pop down your local breakers yard strip out some heatshirld from under the exhaust run loads of cars have it and cut to suit or look at something like made for purpose sheet material (I have used stuff from a company called zircotec in the past with great results).
Try these!
http://www.zircotec.com/page/heatshield_products/97 (http://www.zircotec.com/page/heatshield_products/97)
The heat shield pattern has been posted thanks to a member that offered it for a digital scan. http://www.fjowners.com/index.php?topic=9407.0 (http://www.fjowners.com/index.php?topic=9407.0)
I also posted his question on the UK FJ/FJR forum and the general view seems to be that I might as well fit some heat shielding because it doesn't cost much and if the fibreglass belly pan or the new paint that it will be covered in is susceptible to heat or bubbling then it should be protected. Prevention rather than cure.