The transmission tunnel of the FD RX-7 is extremely thin. This helps reduce weight in the car, but it also allows for heat to transmit into the cabin.
On the passenger side of the car where the factory exhaust is routed, there are a couple panels of heat shielding to insulate the chassis from the extreme heat of the rotary engine’s exhaust. Our heat shielding and firewall were pretty beat up, likely from the careless shop who installed the crate engine and used poorly fitting heater hose as fuel line which led to our car catching fire.
We removed the heat shielding and started straightening out the dents. There are two heat shields for the exhaust along the transmission tunnel, and then a big U-shaped heat shield that insulates the entire transmission tunnel from the heat of the factory catalytic converter.
On the back side of the factory heat shielding is an insulation that works in the same principle as Sticky™ Shield. Layering Sticky™ Shield on top of this will add more thermal barriers to reduce the amount of heat that is transferred into the cabin. This is what we did in Project Viper and the results were excellent.
After wrapping the factory heat shields with Sticky™ Shield, we were ready to install them back into the car.
2 comments
That looks like some good stuff. If it helped the Viper sidepipes so much, it should make even more of a difference for a rotary.
I did the same on my race FD with a similar product. Made a massive difference – more than 30 degrees C cooler on the tunnel.