Floor Insulator Question (1 Viewer)

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Houston, TX
Several of the floor insulators are a sandwich affair. Has anyone dissected one of these to see if they are just two sheets of steel or if there is some type of insulation sandwiched between them?
 
Steel, no way, more likely a thin layer of aluminum foil with acoustic foam or rubber.
 
Steel, no way, more likely a thin layer of aluminum foil with acoustic foam or rubber.
These are underneath the body and go between the exhaust system and the body of the car for heat shielding. Some are just a single layer of steel, but at least two of them are two layers of steel with a small gap between the two layers. You cannot see what is inside, but I was thinking maybe an insulating material like vermiculite, hopefully not an asbestos type of material. Or it might be just a small air gap.
 
My guess (or useless $0.02) its probably an air gap.
Or maybe fiberglass

Vermiculite absorbs water, so don't think they'd use it.
Asbestos was banned from use in auto manufacturing for many markets before 80s were built, so unlikely to be asbestos (maybe not impossible though).
 
Well, since no one had a definitive answer, I decided to sacrifice one of mine. It contained a sheet of flexible white material about 1/4" thick that clearly provides thermal protection as well as sound deadening qualities. So, there it is.
 
Got photos you can post up?
 
OK, here are two photos. I need to explain a bit. This is the main muffler heat insulator, part #58043-60010. As you can see, mine is in bad shape - really bad shape. I searched for 6-months to find a new one, and of course, it is no longer available. Because of that disappointing fact, I purchased a used one, which is actually very nice. However, before buying the used one, I decided to drop mine into my home-built caustic hot tank just to see if it would somehow (dream-on) resurrect it. The moment I did that, all hell broke loose in the tank. Clearly, there was a significant chemical reaction between the hydroxide in my tank and whatever was inside of the insulator itself. This is what prompted my original question as to what is in there.

I still do not know the composition of the white layer, but clearly it is there, and I am pretty sure if I had opened it up before the dip in my tank, it would have been a nice uniform insulating layer sandwiched between the upper and lower steel sheets of the part.



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