The engine’s out again. I’ll get to that update when I have it concluded.
While it was out of the way, I added heat shielding on the firewall behind where the engine resides:
I also added a second shield to the transmission tunnel (it already has a layer of adhesive backed insulation from the turbo days). I’m leaving the first layer in place and adding to that a modern-style thin aluminum layer with an air gap between it and the tunnel – very much like Moti did on Morpheus.
I started with a tunnel shield from an ND Miata. With the insulation layer removed (black part in the photo) it is a featherweight. Essentially no weight penalty for adding it.
Then I formed it to fit the NA tunnel:
Installed, with ~1/4″ air gap:
