Whoa, what happened there? That could dissuade me from getting one of those. I've been looking at it, thought the price is a little steep. I had an AEM on my Del Sol, and it made a wonderful mod. Though obviously that one was drastically different.
There has been cases of the turbo heat shield causing the valve cover to melt. There are two very long threads on the "other" forum. I personally don't think I'll have an issue because I do not live in a hot climate and I do not currently do track events.
Don't have a turbo, but if I did I'd not be running the heat shield that would melt a valve cover. That is a good way to burn ones MINI to the ground. Yikes! Is it only certain brands of shields that do that?
It's with both the AEM and NM Eng shields. I'm looking at doing something else in place of the shield.
Agreed, I'm all about burnig up the twistys in the MINI, I just don't want it melting around me while I am doing it. If there was even a chance of that happening I don't think I would have made that purchase. :nonod:
When I purchased it and than two friends mentioned the heat shield issue. Which I would have thought it would have been mentioned in the multiple threads I've read about the AEM intake.
The most effective thing you can get for your hood scoop is to buy the shield that mounts to the underside of the hood, after long drives the plastic hood scoop is barely warm and I live in a hot climate! It's dirt cheap also, my ex AEM heat shield didn't perform half as good as the scoop heat shield!
I removed a foam shield and a tin shield. I installed the tin shield when I bought the car. I was thinking about installing that back onto the hood. Do you have a pic?
Here, this is the only heat shield you'll ever need for saving your hood scoop from warping and it keeps the area around the scoop pretty cool!
Soooo..... You think the factory knows about this issue as a result of the R56 Challenge racing series? Think they are adding additional cooling air through the fake hood scoop, and dumping it on the leading edge of the plastic valve cover? Hmmmmmmm? This is my "knock off" to their racin piece.... Real simple part you can make out of light gauge aluminum.....
True... Just saying it probably showed up as an issue with their racing series and they developed a cooling solution to deal with the problem. It wouldn't have been a very good marketing point if the Challenge cars couldn't finish a race......They added cool air.... Those aftermarket heat shields simply contain the hot air off the turbo housing and simply direct it straight back to the plastic cover.... The stock intake system does a fine job of bringing cold air to the stock filter.... Pick your poison.....
I'm thinking about removing the aem shield and figuring out how to mod the factory shield I removed. Would love to use the challenge duct some how. But I really don't want to cut the aem scoop.
I'm installing mine next week. I'll use the heat shield until I have some spare cash to buy the WMW Turbo Wrap.