One of the newest items in the Heatshield Products thermal-barrier family is our Lava Oil Filter Heat Shield™. What’s it do? For cars running headers and/or turbocharger piping near the oil filter, the Lava Oil Filter Shield™ creates a thermal barrier around the oil filter to deflect up to 80 percent of the ambient heat. It also provides a layer of protection for the oil filter against road debris.

To demonstrate just how well the Lava Oil Filter Shield™ works, we stopped at AntiVenom Performance in Seffner, Florida, and made use of their 2000 Corvette test car. The car featured a set of Kooks headers, a mild cam upgrade and a few other high-performance modifications. Our test was done in the middle of a hot Florida day, with ambient temps in the mid-90s.

ABOVE: On our C5 test mule, the Kooks headers its equipped with run very close to the filter, exposing it the massive amount of ambient heat generated by the header pipes. This combined with the hot temp of the oil, and the normal ambient engine heat the filter is exposed to means the filter is exposed to a lot of heat, which by the laws of physics it will transfer to the relatively cooler oil that's running through it.

ABOVE: After our test drive to get the 2001 Corvette fully up to temperature, we immediately crawled underneath and used a heat gun to take temp readings of the oil filter. On the side of the filter closest to the headers we measured 243-degrees F.

For our baseline, we drove the car around long enough to let everything reach normal running temps, then drove it up Race Ramps to immediately get temp readings of the oil filter after our baseline run. We used a laser-assisted heat gun to measure, and had temps of 208 degrees (engine side) and 243 degrees (header side). And the data display inside the car was reading an oil temp of 214 degrees. (The oil temp sensor for the C5 LS1 is located right above the filter.)

ABOVE:We let the C5 cool off completely, then installed the Lava Oil Filter Shield™, which took all of about 20 seconds. It took us longer to get on the ground and crawl underneath the car than it did to actually install it!

After letting the car completely cool, we installed the Lava Oil Filter Shield™ (which took less than 30 seconds) and did the same baseline run. At the end of the drive, the displayed oil temp had fallen to 209 degrees, and measuring as before with the heat gun, we recorded temps of 199 degrees (engine side of filter) and 226 degrees (header side of filter). We also measured the temp of the headers near the filter, which read 298 degrees.

ABOVE: After installing Lava Oil Filter Shield™and driving the Corvette on the same test drive route as our baseline, we pulled back into Antivenom Performance, removed oil filter shield (which took about five seconds) and measured temps with our heat gun. In the same area of the filter near the headers, we measured 226-degrees F, a 17-degree drop from before. That's 17 less degrees of heat for the filter body to transfer to the engine oil.

The Lava Oil Filter Shield™ is made from a Heatshield Products proprietary volcanic rock material that can withstand temperatures of up to 1,200 degrees of continuous heat, and 2,000 degrees of intermittent ambient heat. Installation is simple: slip it over the installed oil filter. It is held in place by industrial-strength magnets, and a pull ring on the bottom of the shield allows for easy removal for oil changes and other engine service. Currently, the Lava Oil Filter Shield™ is available for most popular American V-8 filters, with more applications coming soon.