V8-Ranger.com

I started laying over the seam across the bell housing tunnel last night. There is an extra piece of metal on the right side that looks to be a heat shield of sorts. Do I just lay everything over or should I try to remove this piece? Also will it hurt anything to saw some slits into the seam to make it easier to bend? Please don't laugh at me, I felt a lot more intelligent about this project before I started.
Larry

I put some slits into my seam too. Makes it much easier to bend back in sections. I then came back with some body cork and made sure it was still all sealed up and then finished it with some black bed liner spray (cheap stuff in a spray can) so it wouldn't rust out.

Same here except I didn't body cork mine. I don't live in an area that gets roads salted so I'm not in the same risk for rusting out. However when I pull the engine, I probably will go back in and spray that bedliner stuff since I can see some surface rust on all the beaten places.

I did the exact same as malcom. I put couple of cuts in the seam bent it down, and it bent really easy. I bent mine downward so it was flush. then i used some type of silicon body sealer stuff (forget what it was called),I let it dry, than i took a thin layer of short strand fiber glass put it over the seem to make it perfectly smooth. sanded it puttyed it sanded it gave it a shot of rubberized undercoating (so it could be painted) finally sprayed it with some white rust paint! Now you would never even know there was a seem there!


My truck also had the heat sheild on the passenger side, I drilled the rivets out got rid of the sheild before I started to cut and bend the flange over!

also depending on the headers you use you wanna make sure you have the seem bent over to the frame on the passenger side. The L&L hedders I had hit the seem (the collector part) so make sure you got enough bent over before droping the engine in!

Some Rangers have a heat shield like you describe. Go ahead and remove it. If your new exhaust is too close to the body, you can remount it where needed, which may not be in the same location.