Hello All,
I am a nerd with engine and just joined the forum. My daughter is driving a 4 door 2001 Honda Accord EX with 4 cylinders. I think her car has about 170,000 happy miles on it. She is attending university far away in PA. She informed us yesterday that the heat shield fell off from the car!! When she googled, she found this link: Car Talk: Don't exhaust yourself replacing heat shields - seattlepi.com
I respected the opinions from these 2 local dynamic duos as I used to listen to them many many years ago on Sunday mornings. But can someone kindly tell me whether my daughter should replace the heat shield. She told us if the heat shield is not necessary, she rather not doing it (to save some money)!!
It sounds (to me anyway) very weird that missing heat shield does not need to be replaced.
Thanks in advance.
John

 

Does she have the shield or did she leave it laying alongside the road? She can strap it back on with hose clamps or something low-tech like that.

There's heat shields all around the exhaust system, and many of them are above the pipe, below the floorpan of the car. Those are more important because they prevent the hot exhaust from softening the tarry sound-proofing on the floorpan of the car.

The shield that's on the bottom of the catalytic converter is mostly to prevent the hot exhaust system from setting fire to anything on the ground. So if the heatshield is missing, she just has to be careful about parking on top of dry grass or leaves or stuff like that.

Clearly, Honda (as a company) has to install the heatshields for product-safety reasons, and they can't assume that every owner is smart enough to take safety into their own hands.

 

Jims got that right, seen quite a few cars come into shops with burnt floor rugs..not a safe nor pretty site...

WheelBrokerAng

 

Thank you all. I guess the Honda do need a heat shield. According to my daughter, she had the fallen piece of heat shield in the truck of the car. There were 2 cars loaded with students going up to Lee Iacocca campus/lab at the mountain top when this happened. So the car behind saw the heat shield fell off.
Thanks for all of the responses.

 

Your welcome..let us know if she gets it replaced..good time to have the Cat Converter and O2 sensors checked or replaced at the same time..

WheelBrokerAng