My 1980 has hooker headers and side pipes and puts out tremendous floor board heat. I am fixing to recarpet and looking for advice on the best heat shield (conventional or non-conventional) that anyone has had good luck with. any help greatly appreciated.

 

Here is a thread from two days ago that talks about the same thing.

 

My 80 with Hooker-style sidepipe headers does NOT put out tremendous heat.

What is your timing set to?

Here's what I posted in the thread that @Piersonpie linked:

I'd only add that @Richard454 mentions the insulation to use (below the floor) later in that thread. Heat Shield Products has some cool stuff.

https://www.heatshieldproducts.com/

 

Thank You Bikespace! I agree with your point entirely... Having a well sealed radiator and bell housing are a great place to start. I still have my heater hoses for my heat and it is connected and it doesn't seem to have much of an effect on the car in the summer months.

I have a 427 BB with long tube headers going the normal route under the floor. My 1968 C3 has plastic floors and there are not metal parts to it. My engine is running higher than normal compression of 12.25-1 and that makes a lot of extra heat going out the exhaust and I have no issue with a warm floor let alone excessively hot floor. I have nothing trying to insulate the heat under the hood from the exhaust other than a ceramic coating on the headers. The extra heat from my compression has burned away the first few inches of each header pipe and my feet are very comfortable cruising around town or on the highway.

Is your timing retarded? Does the vacuum advance still work? It has a good solid vacuum connection with no leakage? How about the total timing you are running, what is it?

Do you still have a catalytic converter on the vehicle? Take a infra-red thermometer and measure the temperature of the front of the catalytic converter. How hot is it? As a catalytic converter gets plugged up the exhaust temperature will go up making even more heat than normal.

Make sure that your radiator cap is on the top of the cooling system. If the hose comes out of the thermostat housing and goes Up, it could be holding air which is blocking the coolant from getting to the radiator in the first place. Air inside a closed loop can be a real problem so ensure that the coolant can flow without any air pockets.
Also be sure that your radiator's overflow tube is there and working. The system should be able to let out the excess hot coolant when the engine is fully warmed up and flow to the overflow jar. Then as the engine cools down the water should be drawn back into the engine which refills the radiator up to the top. With a bad hose connecting the radiator to the overflow jar the whole system stops helping your car. If you look inside the radiator and can see 6-8" of the upper part of the radiator inside without any coolant, then this is likely a problem. The overflow system allows the engine to have as much coolant inside the radiator as it will allow which helps keeps the car cooler.

Don't forget that a faulty worn out radiator cap will cause the engine to run hotter as it can no longer hold 16 lbs of pressure inside the cooling system. A good 16 lb cap will allow you to get up to ~261* (F) but a bad cap will cause you to get hot at 212* (F). The engine needs to be able to pressurize the cooling system in order to cool more effectively.