ss350

Because of the location of the battery in the C6 (right next to the exhaust manifold) it seems a heat shield would extend the battery life. The end of the battery gets really hot.
Does anyone know if there are any afterrmarket battery heat shields and where to get them? I know some cars come with them, the one's I have seen look to be several layers of a fiberglass cloth material.

timd38

This is a very interesting question. If you don't have a heat shield, the electrolyte in the battery can evaporate because of heat, so a heat shield may prevent this from happening. The other side is that the heat shield keeps the heat in, and does the same thing.

journeyc6

On my C5 the batery was totally insulated out of the heat of the engine. So this time GM either realized that batteries don't need insulation no more or they just went totally cheap this time.

Shortimer

You'd think the engineers would have considered this so I'm thinking it isn't needed on our cars. I had a C5 for five years and didn't have any heat-related issues with the battery. I'm hoping for the same service from my '08 coupe.

cclive

Heat is the big killer of batteries...I'll bet the battery on the Z lasts much longer since its in a nice cool place!

FortMorganAl

But the designers had to have considered this and decided that keeping the heat in the battery with insulation was more damaging than the radiation it gets without. I doubt they would decide to save a few pennies if it meant replacing many more batteries under warranty.

If someone wants to reengineer this the experiments I would do are, run the car for 4 hours and measure the case temperature on all sides and the temperature of another close component such as a bolt in the fuse block area. Find the average temperature of the case minus the other temperature. Now insulate the battery and repeat the test. If the difference is less then they were saving money on insulation and if it's more they were saving money on warranty.

timd38

They do.

Also, if the heat shield is $1.40 and the EPUS (expense per unit sold) number is a $1.00, no heat shield.

Pipedreams

3.5 yrs same battery, no problems. But I did develop this specal shield over 2 yrs ago LINK