3 Essential Upgrades to Protect Your Turbo Setup
Posted by Matthew Marks on 24th Nov 2025
I’m Matt, the owner of Exoracing, and I’ve spent around 8 years building and helping customers with their turbocharged cars, including our own AWD Turbo Civic project, so I’ve learned firsthand how much of a difference proper heat management makes.
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve just installed a shiny new turbo (or are about to) and want to make sure it stays safe and reliable. Turbocharging an engine unleashes huge power potential, but it also generates much more heat in your engine bay.
We’re going to go over the 3 most important heat management upgrades for your new turbo setup and explain why we recommend each method, based on years of experience helping customers with heat transfer problems.
When you increase boost pressure, you’re forcing more air into the engine, which means the turbo spins faster and compresses that air harder. Compression naturally generates heat, and at higher boost levels, that heat rises dramatically. Without going too in depth, when air molecules get closer together and move faster, they brush past each other, creating more energy, which in turn creates heat.
At the same time, the exhaust gases driving the turbo are hotter and more energetic, which means the entire turbo assembly, exhaust turbine housing, manifold, and downpipe run at much higher temperatures.
Without proper heat management, this extra heat can start to cook or damage the components around your turbo, melt wiring and hoses, and even affect performance through heat soak.
- Fit a turbo blanket or shield to keep heat in the right place
- Sleeve oil lines and water lines to protect them from radiant heat
- Wrap the manifold and the top of the downpipe to lower bay temperatures
Understanding Turbo Heat and Why It Matters
Every turbocharged engine creates heat, not just from the turbocharger itself, but also from combustion and exhaust flow. The hotter the air and components become, the more your car’s performance can suffer.
Even just the cylinder head and block can push a significant amount of heat into your engine bay from the combustion cycle and the multiple moving internal parts.
When the intake air gets too hot, the ECU starts advancing ignition timing to protect the engine from detonation, which will reduce power. Constant exposure to excessive heat over time also breaks down oil faster, damages plastics, and can even cause electrical issues without proper protection in place.
Managing that heat isn’t just about keeping things safe; it’s about maintaining consistent performance. A car that runs at the right temperature can make the turbo spool slightly quicker, make more power reliably, and components will last longer.
That’s why we put so much focus on heat management in every build at Exoracing, from daily drivers to track builds. The more heat we can keep in the engine and hot components, the colder we can keep the parts which are meant to be cold.
1) Turbo Blanket or Heat Shield
If you only do one thing to protect your turbo build, make it this.
A turbo blanket, or a high-quality heat shield, wraps around your turbine housing, the part of the turbo that gets hottest, and keeps that heat contained. This does two things: it reduces radiant heat in the engine bay and helps the turbo perform more efficiently.
In my own experience, the difference a blanket makes is huge. On our Civic build, before we fitted one, the fan shroud wiring near the downpipe got so hot that the insulation began to harden. After fitting one of our Exoracing T3 titanium turbo blankets, engine bay temperatures dropped dramatically, and nothing nearby suffered heat damage again.
We also had a turbo blanket on Scott's K-swapped turbocharged Concerto, as his turbo was right next to the windscreen washer bottle. If we didn't add anything here, you could almost guarantee he would melt through the bottle and lose all of the water.
We also added some Exoracing gold heat-reflective tape here as an extra failsafe and to provide another thermal barrier. Just adding these simple parts has meant the washer bottle has been perfect and not melted in the 3 years we've had our turbo blanket on there!
By containing the heat, you’re protecting nearby parts like hoses, wiring, intake pipework, and even paintwork on your bonnet. It also keeps the turbo’s heat energy contained within the housing, keeping the exhaust gases hotter and moving faster. That can slightly improve spool-up time and throttle response, which is always an added bonus.
Most OEM heat shields from the factory are thin and leave gaps. A purpose-built turbo blanket forms a tight, consistent barrier around the housing, so the heat stays where it belongs.
This is why turbo blankets are almost always made from textiles, as they can be easily moulded to fit around the turbo's exhaust housing. If you’re running high boost pressure or planning to drive the car hard around a track, pairing a blanket with extra reflective shielding around reservoirs and bulkheads provides maximum protection.
Shop the essentials: Turbo Blankets | Heat Shielding
2) Oil and Water Line Protection (Heat Sleeving)
Your turbo’s oil feed and return lines, and (if you're using it) its coolant lines, keep the core cool and efficient. These hoses can run extremely close to the exhaust housing and manifold, some within just a few millimetres.
Without protection, they’re constantly exposed to radiant heat, which over time can degrade rubber, weaken Teflon cores, and even cause fittings to leak.
We’ve seen this firsthand: one of our very good customers' braided oil line went brittle and split after months of running without sleeving. Since switching to heat-protected lines, they’ve had no issues, even with track use and long stints under boost (a 500whp Honda Integra DC2).
We have also had the same thing happen to ours, which was a massive oversight on our part. We were running the breather lines from our rocker cover to the manifold and stupidly forgot to protect them with a heat sleeve, which burnt through the outer braid.
20 minutes later, with some of our high-temperature silicone heat sleeve and some precut heat shrink tags, we were back up and running!
Heat sleeving is one of the simplest and smartest upgrades you can make.
It’s a high-temperature, silicone-coated fibreglass inner core that slips over your line and acts like a heat jacket. It keeps radiant heat out, shields the surface from direct heat exposure, and helps maintain consistent fluid temperatures.
When we spec out turbo setups, we will always sleeve the first 20 to 30 cm of any line that passes near the manifold, turbo, or downpipe. You can also use sleeving on fuel lines, brake lines, wiring harnesses, and anything else if they’re exposed to radiant heat.
We don't just do this to upsell more products; we do it to ensure customers have the best possible build and can minimise potential problems down the line. Plus, all the heat management I've mentioned in this article is incredibly easy to install, so it's a no-brainer.
Our silicone heat sleeve can withstand continuous temperatures of around 260°C and short bursts over 1200°C. That’s more than enough protection for almost any engine bay. It’s cheap insurance that can save you from a catastrophic leak or fire risk.
Also, just to note, we would never recommend running a heat sleeve directly touching the heat source. Always leave a gap, even if only a few millimetres, to reduce heat transfer. As air is a poor conductor of heat, this will dramatically reduce the temperature of the heat sleeve.
Reflecting vs Insulating: What’s the Difference?
There are two main ways to control heat in your turbo setup:
- Insulating: Products like turbo blankets and exhaust wraps help contain heat, making them ideal for exhaust components.
- Reflecting: Products like reflective tape and gold foil reflect heat, making them perfect for wiring, fuel lines, and air intakes.
In most builds, the best results come from combining both. You trap heat where it belongs, inside the turbo and exhaust, and reflect it away from sensitive components nearby. That’s exactly how we set up our own Civic and customer turbo cars that see both road and track abuse.
By combining both methods, as in Scott's Concerto we discussed earlier, you have the best chance of lowering temperatures and protecting sensitive parts.
Think of it like a house in the peak of summer.
Insulation in the walls keeps the heat from getting in or out, that’s like your turbo blanket and exhaust wrap, trapping the heat where it belongs inside the turbo and exhaust.
Then you use shiny foil on the windows to reflect sunlight back out, preventing the inside from heating up. That’s like your reflective tape, protecting wiring, fuel lines, and intakes from radiant heat.
The smartest setups use both.
Grab heat protection: Silicone Heat Sleeving | Reflective Tape
3) Exhaust Wraps
For the final part of our turbo heat protection guide, we move on to the humble exhaust wrap.
The exhaust manifold and downpipe are among the biggest heat sources in any turbo build. Wrapping them in exhaust wrap helps lock the heat inside the metal and drastically reduces how much it radiates into the engine bay.
In practice, this means cooler intake temperatures, less heat soak into wiring and other components, and a much cooler environment under the bonnet. On our own test cars, wrapping the manifold has reduced under-bonnet temps; the difference is immediately noticeable when you open the bonnet after a rip.
There’s also a small performance benefit. By insulating the exhaust, you help maintain a higher gas velocity, which has the same effect we discussed earlier on exhaust gas speed.
When wrapping your exhaust, focus on the sections that matter most first (the hottest parts): the manifold and the top of the downpipe. Secure the wrap tightly with stainless ties, overlapping each exhaust wrap layer slightly for even coverage.
You don’t need to wrap the entire exhaust system, as temperatures drop enough further down the line that it’s not beneficial.
We always recommend our Exoracing Titanium Exhaust Wrap, which handles extreme heat, and holds up even in harsh track conditions.
Why Don’t Manufacturers Use Turbo Blankets from the Factory?
This is a question we get asked all the time: "If turbo blankets work so well, why don’t manufacturers use them on every car?"
The short answer is that mass production has different priorities than aftermarket applications. Car manufacturers design for cost efficiency, long-term warranty coverage, and ease of assembly, not necessarily for maximum performance or the lowest underbonnet temperature.
Here’s what we’ve seen:
- Cost and complexity: Proper turbo blankets use high-temp materials like silica or basalt, which are expensive and slow to install on a production line.
- Serviceability: Blankets make leak or crack inspections harder, slowing dealer servicing. This is ok in most aftermarket cases, as the majority of the time, you have a turbo in the engine bay that you can easily access, such as on a top-mount manifold. If it were wedged into a very small gap (as in some BMWs), servicing would be nearly impossible. without hours spent removing multiple parts from the car.
- Alternative solutions: Manufacturers use stamped-metal shields instead, as they are cheaper, quicker to assemble, but far less effective at insulation.
In short, car manufacturers choose what’s easiest to mass produce, not what performs best. Also, most factory cars are not performance models, and, as you already know, we try to squeeze as much performance as possible out of them.
We have the freedom to upgrade beyond those compromises, so we don't need to stick to OEM heat management options if better products are available.
Checking That Your Heat Management Works
Once you’ve fitted everything, it’s worth confirming how effective it is. A simple infrared thermometer or temperature probe can show surface temperature drops in real time.
If you run a standalone ECU or digital dash, such as a Haltech Elite 1500, log your intake air temperature (IATs) before and after fitting heat protection. You’ll be surprised how much more stable it becomes during repeated pulls or hot track sessions.
Conclusion
Higher boost levels equal higher heat; there’s no getting around it. But managing that heat properly is what separates a car that performs consistently from one that’s constantly fighting heat soak and component failures.
From experience, I can say the four most effective steps are simple:
- Fit a turbo blanket or shield to contain heat at the source.
- Use heat sleeving to protect vital oil, fuel, and coolant lines.
- Apply exhaust wrap to reduce overall bay temperatures.
- When building a car or a new project, plan the routing of wiring, exhausts, etc., first to ensure you don't cause damage later down the line.
These aren’t the most expensive upgrades, but they make a massive difference to long-term reliability. Every build we’ve applied them to, from customer street cars to our own development projects, has run cooler and more consistently.
If you’ve invested in a turbo setup, it’s worth investing a little in protecting it. Heat management isn’t just about safety; it’s about ensuring your turbo delivers power the same way on every drive.
Build with the right parts! Explore Heat Management at Exoracing
Why You Can Trust This Advice
At Exoracing, we specialise in automotive heat management and performance parts, and have done so for years now. We work directly with mappers, distributors, and enthusiasts worldwide, supplying and testing everything we sell.
Every product mentioned here, from turbo blankets to reflective sleeving, has been fitted and tested on our own builds and sponsors' cars to ensure we have the correct material compositions and to guarantee they will last the test of time.
We share what actually works, not what just looks good on paper. Our goal is to help you build a turbo setup that performs, lasts, and keeps your engine bay in one piece.
For more build advice, heat protection guides, and real-world testing, check out our Exoracing Blog.
Frequently Asked Questions (Turbo Heat Protection FAQ)
Do turbo blankets really work?
Yes, turbo blankets absolutely work, and we’ve tested our Exoracing blankets on multiple cars, including pro competition drift cars. A quality turbo blanket traps heat inside the turbine housing, preventing it from radiating through the engine bay. This not only keeps the surrounding parts cooler but also helps the turbo maintain exhaust gas energy for quicker spool-up. Just make sure you don't buy a cheap blanket, as chances are it hasn't been tested, and the material composition might not be designed for long-term use.
Should I wrap my turbo manifold or downpipe?
If you are struggling with high temperatures or components close to them, then yes. Wrapping your manifold or downpipe is one of the most effective ways to reduce engine bay heat. It keeps exhaust gases hot inside the pipes, maintaining velocity and protecting nearby components from radiant heat.
Is heat sleeving really necessary for oil and water lines?
Absolutely, if these lines run dangerously close to extreme heat. Over time, that can cause cracking or failure. Sleeving keeps temperatures stable and prevents leaks or fires. If your wires and hoses are far enough away in the engine bay, you may not need heat sleeving; if you are unsure, chances are you should use sleeving.
Will these heat management upgrades increase horsepower?
Not directly, but they’ll help your car maintain consistent power by reducing heat soak. Cooler engine bays mean your turbo works more efficiently, and the ECU doesn’t need to pull timing from excess heat. The colder the air going in, the more power you can make, so, in a sense, yes, but only because it creates a better temperature base to get the car tuned.
Can I use these heat protection upgrades on a daily-driven car?
Definitely. Turbo blankets, heat sleeving, and wraps are all designed to handle everyday driving and weather conditions. If a car is completely stock, the need for heat management would be less than in a 1000bhp time attack car, but you can still benefit from reduced temperatures.
How do I choose the right turbo blanket or exhaust wrap?
Measure your turbine housing or check your turbo model (GT28, T3, T4, etc.) to pick the correct size. On our product listing, we have a turbo blanket sizing guide to help you choose the correct one for your application. We have also built a full exhaust wrap calculator for you to be able to decide how much you need before ordering. Simply put in the correct length and inside diameter of the pipe you are trying to wrap, and it will tell you exactly how much you need.
Want to Learn More?
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