Steering rack bellows/boot heat shields?
On the brightside, the rack has had a small, but persistent, leak for probably two years...so needed replacement anyway.
Using my flipped truck manifolds, the crossover & massive 3" downpipe, lol, (ALL fully heat wrapped, BTW), make the clearance between the heat radiating exhaust, and steering rack boots, evidently a little too close for comfort.
Just curious what others have done, to eliminate, or at least minimize, this issue?
Pre-melted pic
Its odd because my Huron speed down pipe and passenger hotside was really close to my rack boots but never melted them and they were only wrapped.
Yours are farther from the boot than mine were.
Maybe a small, bent piece of aluminum, spaced off the hotside pipe half an inch for an air gap.?
I think what I need to do is dumpster dive the local muffler shops looking for an old, removed factory exhaust off of whatever, that has a heat shield in place, and then do some creative trimming and shaping.
I honestly was thinking about attaching whatever I use, to the rack, but it makes more sense to clamp it to the actual exhaust, like you said..
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I am a fleet mechanic, and saw what I thought would make a perfect donor heat shield on one of our Chevy Express vans...
They are spot welded onto the tailpipe and I had one that had broken loose, in a spot that didn't really appear to do anything anyway, lol.
Removed it, cut it in half, and clamped one onto each of my downpipes, near my brand new steering rack's "bellows"...It looks like my downpipe, is still close enough to cause heat damage again, so still need to address that, either by converting to a downpipe "dump" further forward and away from the rack, or add another heat shield...
But should help a lot for now...
1st two pics are the heat shield still on the "donor".
3rd pic is driver side crossover, just below manifold flange.
4th pic is passenger side crossover, also just below the flange to pipe connection...










