Header insulation

Hi folks,

I'm new to and fairly new to Jeeps. Worked on several here and there but I own one now, an '01 XJ. Bought it cheap and non-running due to a blown head and I'm currently finishing up the 4.0 rebuild. I am using a Gale Banks header with stock '01 intake manifold.

There was a torn up oily sheet of insulation between the intake and exhaust manifolds when I took the engine apart. Since I have the header now, I was wondering what other folks have done to keep the heat down? I'd rather not wrap that header, looks like it'll be a tight job to do, plus wrap gets dirty and brittle easily especially when doing things like driving through mud (who does that in a Jeep anyway?).

Check out the Boostwerks thread http://naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1031285&highlight=boostwerks,+turbo

The gold DEI foil treatment seems like the best solution, unless you want to get your header ceramic coated.

You are right to not want to wrap it. Most folks shy away from that as jeeps are notorious leakers. Oil soaks into the header wrap, and then woof! oil starts burning.

Coating the header is a good idea, not necessarily ceramic. Something similar to Jet Hot would be good. Wrap the underside of the intake only. There is also fairly new product called Lava Mat that is suppose to be better than DEI Gold. Some form of insulation over the fuel rail and injectors won't hurt either.

Thanks, that's the kind of info I'm looking for. I might make a thin sheetmetal heat shield under and behind the PS pump too and apply an insulation tape to it. Going to use that stuff on my adv motorbike as well to keep the muffler heat off my side boxes. I haven't built a modified engine in a while, that self-adhesive stuff wasn't around last time.

I tried to make a heat shield out of thin aluminum once. It didn't work too well as there wasn't much room for it. The main bottom side of the plenum was partially protected, but not the runners nor much else.