Has anyone come up with a way to shield the alternator and MC from heat? I'm going to wrap my headers, but I'd like to difuse more heat. It's damn hot in that tight compartment.
As already stated, no need to worry about the MC and alternator, as heat will first cause starter and vapor lock issues. After that the heat becomes more personal as your interior comfort will be at risk. After breaking out in a sweat and having my engine quit in traffic due to vapor lock, I decided to do something productive. I wrapped my exhaust from the headers back with exhaust wrap. My relatively new exhaust was first painted with a high heat silicone paint while out of the car, and then installed. Then, I had the vapor lock problem and decided to wrap it all up while the headers and pipes were installed. There was a heat shield on my GM started, so there was no problem with heat soak.
Wrapping the headers was the most difficult, but I had learned a trick that came in handy. When you make a wrap around a bend, you need to twist the wrap back over itself. This may need to be repeated a few times as you work your way around a tubing bend. The folding over of the wrap keeps it tight as you go around the bend. The wrap must be done tightly.
You can buy s/s tie wraps from Harbor Freight for $4.98 a pack of 25. I haven't found s/s tie wraps that lock well every time, so I came up with a way to fold the wrap back to lock itself.
With this addition the interior temps have dropped significantly and no-more vapor lock, and my composite rear spring is well protected from damaging high heat. The paint must be helping prevent rust because I haven't seen any, and the car has been driven through several heavy rain storms. My system used five rolls of wrap going back to the mufflers. I did need to make a skid shield to protect the pipes from shredding where they go under the rear spring.
The shield consisted of a 1 1/4 inch aluminum strap from a building supply store and a few hose clamps to hold them on. These are needed if you are using the stock under car exhaust system.