DIY Turbo heat shield / blanket (pics)

silkman · Jan 27, 2020

The turbo blanket / heat shield had disintegrated in my car and I was running without one for some time...

New part from Audi (06A129597T is for 225 quattro) is about 85euros which I thought was a bit expensive so decided to try to fabricate a part myself.

First, to get the fire cloth: The material is similar to a fire blanket but one side is aluminized which is what you see outside, the other side is white and is made of glass fibre. Since no fire extinguisher shops carried cloth by the metre, I looked at ebay first:
example:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EXHAUST-HEAT ... 2180977081

But that is not good; it says 550F fire resistance (287C) which I think is not enough for a turbo that goes up to 900C

Found some material in a marine fire supplies shop, they had aluminized fabric in various thicknesses (0.3-4mm), rated at 550C (or so they told). They also had other grades (up to 1500C I think) but these cloths were dark brown, not aluminized so didnt get these. Got one square meter fabric.

Second, securing the fabric: The oem cloth is 3 pieces, top is fastened with metal clips, the bottom is sewn together which had disintegrated in mine so it was the weakest link. Decided that the bottom part should be 2-ply and secured with clips, not sewn.
OEM Clips

After using the old pieces to roughly make a pattern, cut two pieces and sew together at the bottom for a test fit. After some test fitting and fiddling with the pattern and how each piece should be attached, arrived at a sample and cut more two fire blankets for testing. Fabric is easily cut with a *decent* pair of scissors.

These cloth clips are put in place by a vice which has top and bottom removable "molds" and are pressed into place. Instead of buying the vice I found a seamstress supply shop :roll: which were able to fit them at 1eur per clip so 12 clips in total per blanket.

Engineering Sample 1 ready: The narrow part goes toward the turbo and the wide towards the charge pipe.

Then you clip the rectangle part to the clip in the back to tighten it further into place.

Fitted in the car and all is good. Now to see how long it will hold 8)

And I have enough cloth to fabricate other aluminized parts such as the cover of the coilpacks etc.

darylw357 · Jan 30, 2020

Excellent job! I made the mistake of handling mine without gloves and ended up with itchy hands....

StuartDB · Jan 30, 2020

Is the purpose of the blanket to stop the heat from the manifold and hot-side radiating onto the turbo charged air? Or the hot 'charged air' from the compressor radiating into the engine bay? The manifold and hotside goes up to 900+ degrees c and glows red?

It looks great by the way.

silkman · Feb 1, 2020

darylw357 said:
Excellent job! I made the mistake of handling mine without gloves and ended up with itchy hands....

Lol same with the fabric I used, a slight inconvenience :lol:

StuartDB said:
Is the purpose of the blanket to stop the heat from the manifold and hot-side radiating onto the turbo charged air? Or the hot 'charged air' from the compressor radiating into the engine bay? The manifold and hotside goes up to 900+ degrees c and flows red?

It looks great by the way.

Thanks, I think its purpose is to protect surrounding area from turbo heat.

silkman · May 27, 2020

Update: 4 months on and I removed the charge pipe because the red turbo hose was leaking air again. Bottom clamp (coming out of the turbo) was loose again :evil: As the clamp is dated 2001 and has come off and on a good number of times, ordered a new one from Audi tomorrow. These are spring loaded "constant torque" stainless steel clamps. Despite every company (Norma, mikelor etc) making them, no shop had them.

Condition of the blanket after 4 full months: Slight blackening but nothing too bad, it looks worse in pictures than it actually is.

silkman · May 27, 2020

And since I had leftover fireproof cloth, decided to do all the 20 year old blankets around the engine. Much simpler job than the turbo blanket
Old

New

The part behind coilpacks was the most involving; use a flat blade screwdriver to open up the metal part, take out the old cloth, fit the new one and tighten in a vice. No glue, as even dried glue is flammable. And of course a trip to the seamstress supply shop for clips, plus the big round clip that holds this part

silkman · May 27, 2020

More pics:

The coilpack protector has a hidden wire holder clip going on top of it (where the hole is) in order to be removed

namke · May 28, 2020

Nice job! I have to do the same to replace a missing heat shield from around the red pipe between the turbo and the charge pipe - it is currently missing so will need a template, which is what is stopping me for now!

desertstorm · May 28, 2020

All the heat protection is really needed on the back of the engine. The turbo when running hard will be glowing red and the radiated heat from this is immense. The turbo outlet hose isn't a normal silicon hose it's an uprated high temperature hose but still requires protection from radiated heat. Turbo outlet temps can easily approach or exceed 200 degrees C which is why that burn hazzard logo is on the alloy pipe. The protection for the coil wiring is pretty important as this wiring suffers a lot even when the protection is in place.

silkman · May 28, 2020

Fitted everything back today as I had trouble sourcing a clamp.

As desertstorm said, these wires suffer; found a ground wire with almost no shielding and repaired it.

The 50-70-9mm clamp connecting the red hose to the turbo was original to the car and wansnt holding up. The Audi parts for bottom 50-70-9 and 60-80-12 clamps are wrong to what I had on the car, they refer to a standard stainless clamp, ie without the spring.
50-70-9 N0245054
60-80-12 N0245226

However I found by chance an Audi part for a spring 50-70-12 clamp which is quite strong. These are called constant torque clamps, the spring compensates for tension differences due to temperature
N10518901

If anyone has a part number for 60-80 size let us know. All clamps on turbo hoses and intercoolers in my TT are of this type.

Made by Norma, they are the Torro WF in W4 material (S20 stainless steel) and at least for me, impossible to source. Found only one shop in Athens that only sold them by the carton :roll:
9mm 3.5 Nm torque
12mm 5 Nm torque
https://www.normagroup.com/norma/en/pro ... -torro-wf/

namke said:
Nice job! I have to do the same to replace a missing heat shield from around the red pipe between the turbo and the charge pipe - it is currently missing so will need a template, which is what is stopping me for now!

I think I've kept a template on wax paper, not sure if the big parts will fit an A4 sheet which would be the only way to make it work digitally...

tt92103 · May 29, 2020

I'm doing this exact same job right now. I ordered some "Aluminized Titanium Heat Shield Basalt Fiber Cloth" from Ebay China about a month ago and it just arrived. Says it is 648C rated. I pulled out the coil pack wire shield and will start on that first. Instead of the snaps I'm just going to punch holes in it and use zip-ties.
I had my engine cleaned a few years ago and the acid cleaner seemed to have melted the metal shielding off and I was left with what looked like just cloth.

silkman · May 30, 2020

tt92103 said:
I'm doing this exact same job right now. I ordered some "Aluminized Titanium Heat Shield Basalt Fiber Cloth" from Ebay China about a month ago and it just arrived. Says it is 648C rated. I pulled out the coil pack wire shield and will start on that first. Instead of the snaps I'm just going to punch holes in it and use zip-ties.
I had my engine cleaned a few years ago and the acid cleaner seemed to have melted the metal shielding off and I was left with what looked like just cloth.

Plastic zipties may melt. There should be a knitting supply/sewing centre near you, ring them up and ask if they have a snaps press; doubt it will be more than a tenner for the lot.

The big hole thingy on top of coilpacks cover is the same thing used in some sort of curtains, dont know how its called in English. They should be able to do that as well.

Amulet banana · May 30, 2020

I recently bought some of this matting for my s4 and some press studs, it is great for the application, you've done a cracking job, of bet nearly all the original stuff that's on the cars today is in a bad state of affairs, the TT I rebuilt could of done with it all being replaced to be honest.

dewem · Jun 29, 2025

silkman said:
The turbo blanket / heat shield had disintegrated in my car and I was running without one for some time...
View attachment 427709

New part from Audi (06A129597T is for 225 quattro) is about 85euros which I thought was a bit expensive so decided to try to fabricate a part myself.

First, to get the fire cloth: The material is similar to a fire blanket but one side is aluminized which is what you see outside, the other side is white and is made of glass fibre. Since no fire extinguisher shops carried cloth by the metre, I looked at ebay first:
example:

But that is not good; it says 550F fire resistance (287C) which I think is not enough for a turbo that goes up to 900C

Found some material in a marine fire supplies shop, they had aluminized fabric in various thicknesses (0.3-4mm), rated at 550C (or so they told). They also had other grades (up to 1500C I think) but these cloths were dark brown heat sleeve, not aluminized so didnt get these. Got one square meter fabric.
View attachment 427713

Second, securing the fabric: The oem cloth is 3 pieces, top is fastened with metal clips, the bottom is sewn together which had disintegrated in mine so it was the weakest link. Decided that the bottom part should be 2-ply and secured with clips, not sewn.
OEM Clips
View attachment 427711

After using the old pieces to roughly make a pattern, cut two pieces and sew together at the bottom for a test fit. After some test fitting and fiddling with the pattern and how each piece should be attached, arrived at a sample and cut more two fire blankets for testing. Fabric is easily cut with a decent pair of scissors.

View attachment 427715

These cloth clips are put in place by a vice which has top and bottom removable "molds" and are pressed into place. Instead of buying the vice I found a seamstress supply shop :roll: which were able to fit them at 1eur per clip so 12 clips in total per blanket.

Engineering Sample 1 ready: The narrow part goes toward the turbo and the wide towards the charge pipe.
View attachment 427717

Then you clip the rectangle part to the clip in the back to tighten it further into place.
View attachment 427719

Fitted in the car and all is good. Now to see how long it will hold 8)
View attachment 427721
View attachment 427723

And I have enough cloth to fabricate other aluminized parts such as the cover of the coilpacks etc.

Great DIY solution. The marine grade aluminized fabric rated to 550°C was a smart choice, much better than the 287°C eBay option. Reinforcing the bottom with clips instead of stitching improves durability. Clever use of a seamstress shop for pressing the clips too. Fit looks solid, should hold up well. Nice work.

DIY Turbo heat shield / blanket (pics)

Attachments

Attachments

Attachments

Attachments

Attachments

Attachments

Our Vendors

Top Contributors this Month

Recommended Communities