
Master Cylinder Heat Shield
The stock car came with a nice stamped steel heat shield to protect the master cylinder and reservoirs from exhaust manifold heat. You can see it above in this picture of the engine in the Corolla I used to race.
While the red car has a ceramic coated header on it — which helps – I still wanted to shield the M/C. Unfortunately, finding a used OEM piece proved impossible. So I set about fabricating one. Started with a piece of relatively light sheet steel. I’d have preferred aluminum (reduced mass = less re-radiation), but we’re deep in the middle of isolating from the Coronavirus crap and I don’t have any sheet aluminum big enough in my pile of parts. I was really happy with the bend – used my 5″ bench vise brake – and just worked the piece from side to side bending a bit as I alternated. Came out perfect – and I got the angle right on the first try!

There’s a captured nut on a small bracket on top of the booster — I figured I’d use it along with the master cylinder retaining nut on the same side to attach the shield. Made a few bracket pieces out of the same sheet metal. And used the brake to bend the brackets.



Once happy with the positioning, I tacked welded it.



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