Under Hood Liner necessary?

[Silver Spartan]

I recently went to rinse off my 2020 gladiator under hood liner and it just crumbled and fell apart. How important is it to have it and do I need to replace it or can I run without it without the heat affecting the paint on my hood in the future?

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[Blade1668]

In older Jeeps not a big deal if not less paint damage. I've had Jeeps with and without, I had more paint damage in one's with hood liner's. Unfortunately my original hood for my MJ got took with most of my "spare" parts, so it's current hood is off older one with venting installed. Color of vehicle and if stored outside all of the time matters more. AKA sun beating down on it.

 

[Hootbro]

Parts listings call it a "Hood Silencer Pad" so I would say it is probably safe to go without it.

 

[GEETCH]

OP, i have been running without my hood liner now for two years, no issues.

 

[Silver Spartan]

Thanks for the input and appreciated.

 

[Reddout99]

All I know is, even with my hood insulation, it is hot under there. Supposed to be a paint protector

 

[zuki_dan]

I have been running mine for about a year and a half with no hood liner since making the rubicon vent functional. I have had no issues. I can visually see the heat rising out the rubicon vents and the electric fan doesn't have to run as much while offroading.

 

[Puch]

I ran mine without the insulation for the first part of summer (through July). After pulling my trailer for 4hrs on the highway, I could cook some burgers on the hood! I only noticed how hot it was because I “had” some cheap pinstripes on it. The glue had softened enough that the stripes had lifted
up in a few spots.
Yes, I replaced the insulation.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

The gains from removing it are outweighed by the negatives. It isn’t necessarily guaranteed to last the life of the car. It serves the following purposes:

1. insulating the hood from heat. Not just the paint on the inside but the paint on the outside. This also makes the hood less dangerous to touch. The hood on my diesel after a drive is just below burn your skin off temperature. It would be worse without a liner.
2. Insulate the engine when starting in the cold. The insulating pad does keep heat in. That’s the logic behind people removing them. It’s not enough so that removing it solves an overheating problem, but it does improve warmup in cold weather
3. Noise reduction. Most of the noise at the top of an engine is decidedly not the engine sounds you actually want to hear as it’s mostly unpleasant valve train noise. Manufacturers want you to hear exhaust noise, not lifters and chains.
4. Cheap fire suppression. Engine fires usually start small and localized. Then they spread. These insulator pads are designed to fall from the hood and smother the fire and prevent further spreading. They’re not perfect and they’re not always effective in every fire or when the fire is too large or its source isn’t cut off.

When you damage one of these pads, you should consider replacing it. Manufacturers don’t spend money installing superfluous parts.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Parts listings call it a "Hood Silencer Pad" so I would say it is probably safe to go without it.

Ironically, in the past, one line of cars I can think of (Jeeps as well back then) - if it had AC it had the hood insulation and that's what it was called back then.
If it did not have AC, then no pad.
I'll have to see if I can track that any farther than the 1980s.

UV fades paint as badly as anything.
Heat causes damage, but think how hot that hood gets sitting in the sun on a hot day, engine not running. Which is worse?

If mine goes south, me being me, I'll replace it.
But that's not telling anyone else they should do the same.
It was there, I'll want it back again.

 

[Dick]

It's for sound deadening. The lower end models don't even have one. If it got hot enough to damage your hood paint, the plastic clips that hold the liner in place would have melted already. Plus, the underside of the hood has sleketonized bracing that acts as a heat sink. air coming in from radiator moves through the now exposed bracing and carries heat away. Neither one of our JK Sports have them, and our JLUS base didn't either. Everyone was saying the same crap about the engine cover too, well, they stopped using those altogether.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

The gains from removing it are outweighed by the negatives. It isn’t necessarily guaranteed to last the life of the car. It serves the following purposes:

1. insulating the hood from heat. Not just the paint on the inside but the paint on the outside. This also makes the hood less dangerous to touch. The hood on my diesel after a drive is just below burn your skin off temperature. It would be worse without a liner.
2. Insulate the engine when starting in the cold. The insulating pad does keep heat in. That’s the logic behind people removing them. It’s not enough so that removing it solves an overheating problem, but it does improve warmup in cold weather
3. Noise reduction. Most of the noise at the top of an engine is decidedly not the engine sounds you actually want to hear as it’s mostly unpleasant valve train noise. Manufacturers want you to hear exhaust noise, not lifters and chains.
4. Cheap fire suppression. Engine fires usually start small and localized. Then they spread. These insulator pads are designed to fall from the hood and smother the fire and prevent further spreading. They’re not perfect and they’re not always effective in every fire or when the fire is too large or its source isn’t cut off.

When you damage one of these pads, you should consider replacing it. Manufacturers don’t spend money installing superfluous parts.

Interesting points. I have noticed that of all the cars I've had that had that pad, they were held up by plastic clips while other stuff had wire clips, including rubber heat baffles and so on - wire clips. But that pad had plastic clips.
I can't say it's for fire or not, I've no proof either way, maybe it was money? But it's interesting at the least.

They prevent the large flat surface of the hood from resonating with certain engine sounds, too. Possibly similar reasons the inside of the outer door skin in years past was sprayed with a heavy substance - to prevent "tinny" sounds with certain vibrations?

 

[ChrisNLA]

When I bought my 2016 JK brand new, it didn't have an under hood liner. I drove it that way for 90K miles. No issues other than being slightly noisier.

As I got to the end of ownership with that Jeep, it occurred to me that the liner should have been there, and there was even some white residue along the edge of the hood (under the hood). Looking back at that point, I suspected the Jeep was probably damaged in transit and repaired (white residue probably from buffing, and the hood liner missing) and then sold to me.

 

[Wolf Island Diver]

It's for sound deadening. The lower end models don't even have one. If it got hot enough to damage your hood paint, the plastic clips that hold the liner in place would have melted already.

The damage to the paint doesn’t come from extreme temps that actually cause it to bubble or burn. It comes from the delta between hot and cold and repeated cycles of the engine running and not running. The damage comes over time. The liner serves the purpose of reducing the delta particularly around hot spots that inevitably exist in the engine bay and may become apparent in the paint over time.

 

[Dick]

Our JK's are 2015 and 2018, both white with no issues. I had a white 1991 YJ with no issues also. My 2023 Mojave had a liner, for about 3 hours.

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