it was a pain in the ass to take them off and its gonna be even more of a pain to put them on my question is do i need the head shields on my stock ca18 manifold
the one on top and then the one covering the bottem of the turbo
my guess is yes i do otherwise shit will melt but i dunno
I am definitely no expert so others will have to weigh in but I suspect they were there for a reason to begin with. You could go without and then replace whatever melts (if anything).
Your just have to decide what is a bigger pain…putting the shields back on or replacing melted stuff that failed while in the middle of nowhere.
I’ve taken off most of my heatshields since the swap was done.
Keep as many as you can, trust me. If you have to keep one, keep the manifold top cover. The one on the bottom of the turbo messes with your steering column if youre in a lhd car. If you can though, cut it a bit and keep it.
if you stay with a stock manifold , than yes, put it back on.
If you are going aftermarket it wont go on anyway
but the aftermarket ones seem to generate alot more heat from my experiences which does not make the most sense …but keep the shields on and heat wrap an aftermarket tubular one just incase as you dont want to burn any wiring or bubble any paint on your hood just because you were lazy