2012 Camry: Eyesore under the hood

Same here. They are ugly and I immediately take them off. I prefer to see metal rather than a bland piece of plastic.

They are a hassle to remove and take away the basic and pure beauty of engine mechanicals but my guess is that they ain't doing this just to look pretty.

My sentiments exactly.

nsive cars. It's pretty!  A Camry should have one too.

Is this a Sonata by any chance? Whatever, do you have a picture?

no dude, a heat shield is just what it says it is - a barrier. retention is nothing to do with it. stopping it heating its outside environment is everything to do with it.

i think you're making that up - i see nothing in "emissions laws" that say anything about heat retention.

you're making that stuff up dude. pzev is simply a sulev vehicle that has an automatic engine cutout and restart system - hence "partial zero". sulev vehicles are common as dirt.

what does this have to do with whether a shield is present? nothing. "double skinning" is common enough on conventional vehicles already. your integra probably has a double skinned section on the header "b" pipe before it goes into the cat. it's particularly useful on thin-skinned welded headers like the toyota because otherwise the heat radiated out of the header at full engine load would cause all kinds of issues with the insulation on the sensor wires, engine mounts, paint, all kinds of stuff.

bottom line, if the car has a welded header as opposed to cast iron, it'll be skinned regardless of emissions designation.

you mean convected away. of the three possible means of heat transfer, air flow is not conduction or radiation.

no. it could possibly to slow down cat cooling when the vehicle is standing still, but moving? that's just bullshit guessing.

as above, it was common enough on welded headers long before pzev came along.

Here's a link to the 3.3L engine. It's quite a gutsy engine for a family se dan. I guess they must have misread the focus group. All I wanted was a nic e, roomy, car with conservative styling for the wife and kids but the thing has got about 240 HP. It took us a while to learn how to move from a start without lighting up the front tires. They're chewed up all to hell.

last time i bought a new car, i got a questionnaire in the mail asking about that kind of stuff. i thought it odd because probably the most different thing about that civic and its old predecessor was that the immediate throttle punch you describe at practically zero pedal depression making it overly harsh, much harder to parallel park, and completely gutless in the final 50% throttle. basically the impression i got from the way questions were phrased was that of a loaded question designed to get endorsement for this kind of "feature".

anyway, i think it's retarded because the flow rate through a butterfly valve is extremely non-linear with most of the "action" up front. i can't see the logic of having a motor output 50%+ of it's potential in the first 10% of throttle opening, and only 20% in the next 50.

before electronic throttle, that kind of behavior was easily "cured" by using a snail cam on the throttle plate. it was a common feature of euro cars, in europe, but never seemed to make it over here. why it's not built in to electronic throttle is completely baffling - unless it's the result of some kind of product miscommunication [like my questionnaire] from the marketing consultants.

We just had to learn how to control a car with 240 HP. Mostly we drive 4-cy linder cars. Our last 6-cylinder car was a Taurus with about 140 HP. These days, we can drive the car just fine. The accelerator responds perfectly. T hat sucker just goes when you floor it. Some fun.

I tend to agree. Here are two shots of the same power plant. One has the cover, the other doesn't.

So the idea is probably that you can leave something in plain sight, that is going to discolor and rust over time, because most customers aren't going to look under the hood. A third world mindset that probably originated with Toyota USA. It would be interesting to see whether this sort of thing is also happening in vehicles assembled in Japan and elsewhere.

Thanks! I was able to find a picture of the more comparable 2.4L engine on the same site;

Cheese to chalk in terms of aesthetics IMO. Hyundai is hiding the things nobody wants or needs to see, like welding, discoloration and rust. Toyota needs to get their act together in this department.

Some people hate clothes too.

" snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@e27g2000vbu.googlegroups.com:

How many times do I need to say this?

There is a "cover" on BOTH engines!!!!

It's just that the one "with" the traditional cover is a non-PZEV , while the one "without" the cover is a PZEV.

How many times do I need to say this?

I have images of both systems from the factory service manual. If you want to see them, email me: tegger (at) tegger.com

I just sent you an email to see if your address is valid. If it is, I will send you the PDF.

" snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@e27g2000vbu.googlegroups.com:

I just sent you an email to see if your address is valid. If it is, I will send you the PDF.

Perhaps this may clarify my point....I couldn't care a rat's ass about the technical nuances associated with the word cover when it comes to exhaust manifolds. This is about aesthetics.....I don't need or want to see "in your face" welding, discoloration and rust somewhere that I'm not accustomed to see these things. For lack of a better or different word, I'm calling whatever it takes to hide that, a cover.

If you don't like seeing that manifold, don't buy the car. Pretty easy. This has been thrashed on the Toyotanation website. One guy made his own manifold cover.

--Vic

" snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com" wrote in news:7d9cc5cc-6730-4bb0- snipped-for-privacy@w4g2000vbc.googlegroups.com:

Now you're making more sense.

There IS a "cover" on the PZEV manifold, it's just uglier than the one on the non-PZEV manifold. And Toyota did not spend the money to install a second cover over top of the first one.

If you want to avoid the ugliness, buy a non-PZEV vehicle and you'll get the pretty cover.

The aesthetics won't make any difference. Few people who drive a Camry will ever see under the hood anyway!

Lugnut

your aesthetics are another man's eyesore. i love welding and functional componentry, hate plastic and bent tin.