I'm in the process of removing as much weight off of my car as possible. It is a track car now. Can I safely remove the exhaust heat shields underneath the car? Paint or something won't catch on fire due to the heat, will it? I will KEEP the shield above the muffler (inbetween the gas tank). While I have it on the lift, any obvious things that I can also remove that I may be overlooking?

:leaving:

You will be fine with out it. I havent had mine on in a couple of years. I saw no changes on interior temps.

I removed mine. No problems but I only autox the car

FWIW the one above the muffler, below the gas tank is the heaviest one. Half or more of the weight saved is from that one.

Removing the heat shield between the fuel tank and exhaust doesn't sound like a good idea. If nothing else, you might be spraying warmer fuel into the intake, reducing the cooling effect of the vaporizing fuel.

I can buy that. The muffler is right by the tank, and gets REALLY hot.

FWIW my exhaust dumps underneath the car at about the pass seat area.

I just removed the big one that goes between the tank and stock muffler. But the muffler isn't there anymore, just tailpipes. I ran around for a week this way, then had a close look at the plastic tank for signs of heat damage. It looked fine. For the other shields, I removed those also, but sprayed the area they had been in with high-temp silver paint. I figured the paint would do kinda the same thing with a lot less weight.

I'm keeping the gas tank heat shield....at least until I do something different with the exhaust. I ended up only taking the passenger side y-pipe heat shield off yesterday. Next time I have it on the lift, I can take the cat heat sheilds off too, but it looked like those and the other one on the drivers side were protecting the brake lines. Are they? And is it from heat? Or from getting snagged?

I ended up having time to yank the cruise control module and cables too yesterday.

I understand that the pounds come down by removing the ounces, but heat shields just seem like the wrong place to look for weight savings. Keeping the floorboards cool may not be important, but I wouldn't even consider removing the shields protecting fuel or brakes lines or the tank. Even if there's no damage, heating the respective fluids is certainly not going to help performance. BTW, another heat shield I wouldn't remove is the one protecting the clutch line.

Some things just are not worth the tenth of a millisecond they might save on lap times IMHO.

I agree....I saw that one and thought it might keep the fluid from boiling and the clutch operating.