With the current economic pinch right now, it’s tough to make improvements to your car or truck and not see your budget take a big hit. Everything has gone up in cost, not to mention issues with the products you want actually being available. With that in mind, we wanted to highlight a selection of budget friendly Heatshield Products thermal barriers and insulation materials that won’t suck up more of your money and are on the shelf ready to be delivered to your door.

db Skin Liquid Sound Damping Material

Is the interior of your car, truck or race car too loud for comfort? Want to improve the performance of your speaker boxes and vehicle’s audio system? db Skin liquid acoustic damping material helps lower the harmonic resonance of the surface/material it’s applied to. Reduction of vibration leads to a quieter interior, and in the case of speaker and component boxes db Skin is effective at dampening structural vibrations over a wide frequency range (10 to 40 KHz) and can boost the output from treated speakers by 1 to 3 decibels – nearly doubling output. Best of all, a 64 ounce container that covers up to 15 square-feet is only about $50, while a gallon of db Skin that covers up to 30 square-feet is about $89.

Lava Exhaust Wrap

If you have headers and/or a turbocharger system, you also have a lot of exhaust-generated underhood heat coming from the headers, feed and down pipe of the turbo system. Insulating those pipes helps to drastically reduce underhood heat, which means less damaging high-temperature heat exposure for underhood components, more power and turbo performance, plus less heat saturating the air intake system that can reduce engine output. Lava Exhaust Wrap insulates those pipes to reduce radiant heat up to 50 percent, significantly dropping underhood heat and its related effects. A 50-foot roll of Lava Exhaust Wrap with our stainless HP Ties included runs about $60. To figure out how much wrap you need, our exhaust wrap calculator makes it easy.

Stealth Shield Interior Insulation

Keeping the interior of your car and truck cooler is always a good thing, especially if you have a classic vehicle that doesn’t have air conditioning. Stealth Shield is our specially formulated fabric insulation that fits under factory carpet or vinyl flooring (and factory headliners) without causing fitment issues. It stops heat from being transmitted through the floor or roof of your vehicle into the interior. It’s lightweight, fire resistant, and easily cut and shaped to fit the typical contours of floorpans. With a maximum temperature rating of 1800 degrees F, it can handle blocking a lot of heat. A four foot long roll only costs about $72.

Lava Starter Shield

Protecting your starter from heat helps it to last longer and reduce the risk of you ending up stranded because of heat-cooked starter. Keeping the starter cooler also helps to reduce the voltage draw it needs to function. Lava Starter Shield protects the starter from heat exposure using our specially-formulated volcanic rock-based thermal barrier fabric. Rated for up to 1200 degrees F continuous heat exposure, Lava Starter Shield installs easily and in most applications doesn’t require removal of the starter. With most replacement starters costing well over $100 these days, Lava Starter Shield costing about $50 pays for itself by extending starter life.

I-M Shield Intake Manifold Insulation

Who doesn’t want more horsepower and torque? But to get any noticeable increases in power output requires spending an equally noticeable amount of money. Defying that norm is the I-M Shield intake manifold heat shield. Dyno tested and proven to add up to 20 points of horsepower and torque, I-M Shield gives you a performance boost you can feel for under $100! It’s available in multiple direct-fit part numbers and universal versions that can be tailored to almost any intake manifold. Best part is no special tuning is required. Just install and go.

Pipe Armor Exhaust Insulation Kit

Insulating your exhaust system helps improve performance while also reducing the amount of heat that radiates from the exhaust pipes. Pipe Armor kits do this and for less than $100. Reducing this radiant heat helps make your interior cooler, reduce the amount of damaging heat exposure under-vehicle components are exposed to thereby reducing wear on components and heling them last longer. The performance improvement comes from the exhaust working more efficiently to extract exhaust gasses from the cylinders, meaning a cleaner charge of air in the cylinders and better combustion. You can get all this for $44-$86 dollars.

Sticky Shield

When you’ve got a problem involving heat and need solve it by deflecting heat away, Sticky Shield is the multi-purpose, versatile stick-on heat shield you can use just about anywhere to deflect heat away so it won’t be causing issues. Floorpans, firewalls, components, kitchen surfaces, the places to use Sticky Shield are numerous. Best of all, Sticky Shield kits range from $43 to about $100.

Cold Air Intake CIS Kit

The cooler the air going into your engine, the more power it can make. High intake air temperatures (IATs) can cause the ECU to reduce ignition timing and that significantly reduces horsepower. CIS Kits are designed to shield the air intake system from underhood heat that soaks the air intake tube and air filter box. This heat is transferred to the air flowing through the box and tube, raising the temperature of the air leading to higher IATs that reduce power. CIS Kits start at $74 and are easy to install, require no tuning, and don’t require any special tools for installation.