The heater core in my Evo IV ruptured about 6 months back, leaking radiator fluid all over my carpet. Since I didn't like the carpet anyway, I pulled the whole thing out. I like the utilitarian look (similar to the Ferrari F430 Scuderia) and was planning to coat the interior in some of that truck-bed rubberized stuff anyway.

For a variety of other reasons I've been running the car with the A/C off for ages. This combination, however, has hit the point of being unbearable. Current weather conditions on this jungle sweatbox of an island are temps of ~30C+ w/~80% humidity. With no A/C, no carpet/insulation, in dense/unmoving urban traffic.

Needless to say it's time I devised a solution for this. I want to keep the "no carpet" look but need a way to lower the interior temperatures. Should I go about fabricating some sort of custom underbody heatshield between the exhaust and the chassis tunnel? What material should I use for that? Should I wrap it with something like gold foil?

I'm going to be installing a turboback stainless exhaust hopefully within the next two months. Should I wrap the whole thing in heat wrap? What disadvantages come with doing that?

 

ive seen it done on miatas. it looked fine, but i would just wrap the tunnel in carpet and leave foot areas empty. Itll look good imo.

 

Maybe put something like this on the tunnel:

http://www.koolmat.com/

With some sort of carpet over it?

 

Rubber is some of the best insulators.... Gold or Aluminum is good for reflecting heat.

Underbody heat reflector/insurlator is your best bet at trying to reduce the cabin temps without putting anything inside.