2012 Camry: Eyesore under the hood

I agree with that! Now, if his homemade cover costs him an engine or more, he should have nothing to bitch about.

I don't know if what he did affects engine operation, and in reading that thread he didn't either. Silly. And this entire thread is silly too, since I never learned why Toyota left the cover out, and risked upsetting the prissy set. I doubt there's some fine balance of heat dissipation there, and assume the Toyota engineers just deemed a shield not necessary. Good for them. All kinds of crap can collect unseen under a shield. Adds weight. Has to be removed to get at what's under it. For those who adhere to the "form follows function" aesthetic, those pipes look real good. Engines aren't clothes models. I never liked chromed engine parts either. Just never impressed me.

--Vic

Same here. I like to see the real thing. Pipes, bolts, welds, all great stuff.

how many times do i have to say this? you're barking up the wrong tree with your double skin being part of pzev suppositions tegger.

1990 honda civic, part #18201-SH3-A71

there /was/ no pzev back in 1990. double skinning is all about protecting vital components from excessive heat. in this case, it's protecting a driveshaft boot.

and in addition to all the stuff mentioned before, thin single skin exhaust transmits more noise - double skinning helps reduce that.

so wtf are you bleating about???

ridiculous nonsense - cT = 1.0

Vic Smith wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I told everybody why. More than once.

Toyota did NOT "leave the cover out"; they changed the shape of it so as to allow the car to qualify for a PZEV emissions-rating.

The non-PZEV version of the 2AR engine retains the old-style open cover that everyone's used to seeing.

If the appearance of the exhaust manifold is important to you, just avoid buying the PZEV version of the car, and you won't have to look at an ugly manifold.

Every time I see a dead car from a rodent's nest, it is under one of those foolish plastic covers.

Manifolds are ugly?

I'd rather have nothing "cosmetic" included under the hood for better visibility of the functional bits, but that's possibly just me. Now I like a nicely detailed engine compartment, but please no useless covers, shields, etc. (splash shields and skid plates are OK, but please don't put anything under there that serves no purpose other than to hide some "unsightly" bits.)

nate

Total agreement here, they can conceal problems.

Yes, you did, and it makes sense to me. Sometimes when you run into systems like this the act of fabricating a "cover" or similar small changes can reflect in reduced reliability that might not have been foreseen. Do you have any idea if this might be the case in this instance?

you're wrong tegger.

this is not from a pzev vehicle, it's from a 1990 civic.

of course he doesn't - he's made his guess and he's set himself to broadcast mode. and he can't pay attention to facts when he's in broadcast mode.

I look at some of the new cars where they have made just about the whole top of the engine compartment wall to wall plastic covers and wonder how you know when something is amiss or even how you work on it without a hour of disassembly just to see if the fan belt is ok. I could understand it if it was the part normally exposed, like the top of the hood, but it's not.

"hls" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

You mean as in adding your own cover over top of the OE one? If so, I have no idea.

I guess there's a possibility of upsetting whatever delicate balance Toyota achieved in designing and certifying the engine.

Something like that. Remember when Ford and probably others used to leave the bolts loose in the end flange holes on some manifolds. Some people (yep, I was one of them) thought they should be tightened, and did so. Caused the manifold and or ears to crack. I would hate to screw up that jacketed manifold by doing something stupidly cosmetic.

Yup, the hood is the concealment. Unless you have a particularly pretty engine with a high-rise intake, then you may want to cut a hole in it :)

nate

what kind of "delicate balance" was honda trying to achieve "certifying" this engine?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder:

yeah, but are those manifolds double skinned? if they are, they must be pzev compliant!