What to do with underhood insulation

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velobard

New member
The underhood insulation on my car is driving me batty. I can clean everything else, but this stuff is "uncleanable". It's a luxury car so I'm not sure I want to totally lose it, but I don't know how much actual sound dampening it does. It's picked up stuff that's splashed through the engine compartment, compound splatter from it's last trip to the body shop, and just general gunk. What can be done with this stupid material??? It seems way to fragile to do any meaningful cleaning. Cover it with something? Replace it with something better? Any ideas at all?
 
i agree. that pad might be saving your paint . . or it is just there for sounds supression. i think it would serve a little of both . . .



i just got a new beater neon, and that engine hood pad is just finished. i tried to remove ont of the 20 clips holding it in and it just broke. i dusted it with the air compressor - that got most of the dust out. then took a terry towel and dampened it with hot water and simple green. just rubbed it across the entire surface lightly . . made it look a little better.



might not kill ya to go price a new one at the dealer, at least then you will know all your options . . .
 
I've taken it off my turbo Supra for reasons that are too long to type now. In my case it did not change sound level. But long term wise you could see heat of engine bay making faster impact on hood's paint. Good news is there is number of materials out there you can use as heat shield, including ceramic paint. Bad news is that I see an ongoing debate wheter that also serves as fire retardant or not.
 
You could fiberglass it. That would make it easier to clean.



Search some 'Tuner' sights...I know a lot of guys wrap it in vinyl, but you do need some sort of high temp glue.
 
I took a quick peak at one of the OEM parts places, it looks like this thing retails for about $50. The price where I looked was discounted to about $40, but you know shipping would suck that up. The aggrevating part of buying a new one is that I know it would likely be a short matter of time before it was messed up again.



Fiberglass, huh? I've never played with that myself, but it's something to consider. As for vinyl, finding glue that would work shouldn't be a big deal, but I'd be nervous about the vinyl itself being exposed to those temps. This isn't a show car, it's my DD. It's parked outside and exposed to the elements 24/7.
 
I took mine off my Twin Turbo Stealth with no ill effects on sound or paint damage. I did raise the hood bubbles 1/16" to allow hot air to escape though. If you order a new one shipping is a killer because they can't fold these.
 
velobard said:
The aggrevating part of buying a new one is that I know it would likely be a short matter of time before it was messed up again..
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Nah, if you give it a gentle cleaning at each wash it'll stay nice for a *long* time. The one on my wife's '00 A8 looks fine and I'm only now replacing the one on the '85 Jag (cooked from the engine heat but still looks clean).



I use the regular shampoo mix and either a BHB or a cloth and I only wash maybe the front 20% or even less. A very gentle rinsing follows using as little water as possible (don't satuate it). The rinsing gets most of the mat a bit damp and that water is enough to clean the rest of it. I dry it with cotton towels (which always end up dirty). The little bit of shampoo/water that gets into the engine compartment wipes up easily enough and provides a little cleaning too. Cleaning around/under the front edge of the mat with a paintbrush-shaped BHB will clean out a *lot* of stuff that'd otherwise be trapped there.



If winter driving is in the picture, doing this regular light cleaning will also help keep the salt residue from getting to the point where you have to take drastic measures (e.g., vinegar).
 
Accumulator said:
Nah, if you give it a gentle cleaning at each wash it'll stay nice for a *long* time. The one on my wife's '00 A8 looks fine and I'm only now replacing the one on the '85 Jag (cooked from the engine heat but still looks clean).
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Thanks! I admit, I was curious how you dealt with this because it's hard to picture you settling for grungy insulation.



I guess I'll give a shot at gently cleaning it, then go from there. It definitely doesn't seem worth replacing it in the middle of winter, given that salt-laden slush or who-know-what might get up there.
 
I've had some funny staining on my Mach 1's underhood blanket. I took a tip from a fellow car show entrant and used Kiwi Black Shoe DYE (not polish). I used the dauber that comes with the bottle and it took about 1 hour to completely cover the blanket. The dye lasts about 2 years and is a nice, matte black.



Toto
 
Totoland Mach said:
I've had some funny staining on my Mach 1's underhood blanket. I took a tip from a fellow car show entrant and used Kiwi Black Shoe DYE (not polish). I used the dauber that comes with the bottle and it took about 1 hour to completely cover the blanket. The dye lasts about 2 years and is a nice, matte black.



Toto
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That definitely sounds worth trying. I'll clean a little of the gunk first, then give that a shot. It's not like I have much to lose.
 
velobard said:
That definitely sounds worth trying. I'll clean a little of the gunk first, then give that a shot. It's not like I have much to lose.
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Plus, you'll have enough dye left over to do most of the neighborhood's black shoes LOL.



BTW...you guy's get all your electricity back in the St. Louis area? Tuff stuff with a summer storm and a winter ice storm.



See you



Toto
 
Other methods? Maybe carpet foam or mild extraction? Or a carpet-impregating protection? I need to find a good solution too because these flat bastards are sensitive and ungrateful.
 
my 93 rx7 twin turbo, is more that likely one of the hottest runnging engines out there and I have yet to have and issue with my paint and it dont have the protector thingy under it
 
Totoland Mach said:
Plus, you'll have enough dye left over to do most of the neighborhood's black shoes LOL.



BTW...you guy's get all your electricity back in the St. Louis area? Tuff stuff with a summer storm and a winter ice storm.



See you



Toto
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That's it, I can do a army boot spit shine on my underhood insulation! :cooleek:



Yeah, we were out of power for a day, then it came on overnight, then went out again for another half day. Everyone's back on now. We're lucky to have a fireplace and I kept it roaring mega-hot for 3 days until I was confident the power would stay on. I've only lived here since the beginning of summer so I didn't have much wood collected yet, but I had it so hot I didn't have any trouble tossing on soaked, green logs coated with a thick layer of ice and have them burn. Thankfully before I had to do too many of those at the end of my reserves I was able to retire the fire. It's really crazy to have the power out so much this past year; on the hottest day of the year and on the coldest night of the year. I grew up here as a kid and remember only maybe once ever having the power out overnight. Ameren claims this was the worst ice storm in their history, but I remember at least one significantly worse in the '70s, this one just caused a worse outage. There's a lot of talk about them slacking on tree-trimming to save bucks.



Bence, I don't know about extraction. I have an older LGCM, not sure if I want to try that or not. It's not exactly powerful so it *might* be safe.
 
velobard said:
Thanks! I admit, I was curious how you dealt with this because it's hard to picture you settling for grungy insulation.



I guess I'll give a shot at gently cleaning it, then go from there. It definitely doesn't seem worth replacing it in the middle of winter, given that salt-laden slush or who-know-what might get up there.
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Heh heh, yeah, I'm resisting the tempation to replace the mat on the Blazer as it'd just be a gift to whoever I sell the thing to when I can't stand its flaws any more :D The guy who wants it doesn't care about the mat anyhow. I *am* replacing the one on the M3 though.



The shoe-dye sounds interesting...wonder if it'll seal the surface and if so whether that'll be good/bad/no diff :nixweiss If the Blazer's mat weren't so ripped up I'd try it out on it.



On the extraction idea, none of my mats are really that absorbent; I can blot/rub them dry just fine with the towels no matter how wet I get them (and you don't want to get them *too* wet for a scad of reasons). The few times I've gotten one really soaking wet it's worked out OK; I tried extracting one once after getting it really wet and I will say that I sucked out a *lot* of pretty nasty looking stuff. That was with the Century/Ninja and I was working on a mat in OK condition; I wouldn't expect the LGM to do any real damage unless the mat is on its last legs anyhow but the nozzle of the LGM might not get into all the tight spots too well (improvise something ;) ).



I think I'd use the winter nastiness to experiment with how to keep it looking decent; see if you can avoid that nasty salt-stain effect. Try incorporating a quick clean-up into your wash regimen and I bet you'll gain confidence about how well you'd maintain a new one.



It *is* funny about how some vehicles don't need the heat insulation and others do. I've known people whose hoods got really cooked in a certain spot after they took off the insulation, and there's no question my Jag's lacquer wouldn't do well without that pad (the Souveran sometimes gets compromised in a definite pattern as it is). But Devilsown is right about how hot his RX-7's engine gets (my wife had one) and yet his hood is OK.
 
I dont want to take over your thread or anything, but Ive never had any luck with cleaning my pad under my hood. Ive had my Jeep offroad a few times and dipped the front end under some muddy water. The engine fan caught it and, well, covered everything in muddy water..



I use to work at a chevy dealership and we would spray the thing out really good then spray a degreaser on them.. We would let them soak and then spray them back out.. I of course have NOT done that to my jeep b/c we really didnt care about those cars at work. The degreaser got all over the paint and everything under the hood and such.



Ive been thinking about trying to take mine off and clean it really good. I read where someone said they tried that and broke all the tabs. Ill see if i can get mine off.. But If I cannot then Im not to sure what Ill do. :confused:



You can see some of the mud in this pic:



IMG_3-14.jpg




I just got done cleaning my moms Jeeps' engine:



DSCF6033.jpg




I want mine to look that good. :getdown
 
BlueLibby04- That's some nice work you did there :xyxthumbs



I bet that if you sprayed some mild APC on your mat, let it dwell for a while and then gently agitated it with a BHB you'd loosen a lot of the dirt. Then rinsing it well would flush both the dirt and the suds away. OK, it'll also get the APC all over everything just like the degreaser at the dealership and yeah, that'll strip wax and otherwise cause headaches. Maybe some plastic sheeting would help keep the bad stuff off the already-nice areas.



The APC I'd use for this would probably be something like P21S TAW.



If you want to remove it first, I don't think you'd break all the tabs off if a) things are in good shape to begine with b) you did the job correctly and didn't force anything, and c) you take your time and have a helper there to support the mat while you get it loose.



I'd try to track down somebody who's already done the R&R of the mat, see how they went about it.
 
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