Greg Lab

I know this topic has been debated for years, and I thought getting that undertray off was a great idea for letting the engine cool down after stopping, to avoid heat soak. Then I crawled under car, and it is really scrapped up. It has totally protected the heat exchangers. I think I am going to leave it on.

Sonic dB

took mine off, went up a steeper hill to a parking lot which are very common here in So Cal...not having the tray cover caused it to hit the orange rubber tubing to the heat box on the pavement, tearing one.. i think protection is a good thing so I put it back on...

goofballdeluxe

+1. Same thing happened to me. Those heater boxes aren't cheap either.

Everyone loves to run without one, but few people know there can be expensive drawbacks, especially if the car has been lowered.

Sonic dB

+1 also....my car has been lowered also which contributed to it...but it shouldnt have happened had the cover been in place. There was some debate over whether the cover off could make the engine run cooler and therefore help with premature valve guide wear and also SAI...however there has yet to have been any quantitative data as to whether the cover off actually helps... I doubt that it does, but who knows for sure?... if I were tracking my car, which Im not...Id have it off of course but for daily street it does offer some needed protection if the car has been lowered.

Linnm

Bruce Armstrong thinks it is a good idea to remove it. That is good enough for me

J.A.W.S.

porsche engineers decided to put that thing on - so it's good for me to leave it on...

Van1

I wonder how much scrape "protection" you really get from a plastic tray held on by a couple of dzus fasteners. We are not talking about a steel skid plate on a 4x4. Chances are if you are damaging your undersides without it, you'd probably have ripped off the cover had it been installed.

goofballdeluxe

Umm, if you read the posts above, you'll see the protection the engine tray can provide.

NC TRACKRAT

Uhhh, just because the engine tray had some scrapes on it, doesn't mean it protected anything. It just means the tray got scraped. If you were to bottom out sufficiently to damage the heater boxes, the engine tray would've been smashed in the process and the heater boxes probably would've still been damaged.

goofballdeluxe

Umm, no one bottomed out, per se. At least not in a way that would damage anything had the engine tray been on, which is the point. With the engine tray removed, the heater boxes can droop down ever so slightly. All one needs to do is back out of a driveway and the box can catch and rip off, as that's what happened to me.

The engine tray in place would have prevented this. An advantage to having the engine tray, as it came from the factory, on.

matt777

My car is lowered and I've not scraped anything yet but I live on the Prairies.

Mike J

Take the cover off...let your engine manage it heat better. That plastic box is not going to protect much anyways....

I have thrown out a total of 7 of these now! :-)

curve lover

On & off-topic:
Of all the RL discussions re: undertray on & off, I've only recently noticed mentions of potential aerodynamic advantages with undertray on...

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Unrelated photo taken this week, during a break from a spirited November romp in the Rockies

Mike J

Fine, so my 180mph top speed stability may be compromised....I would still trade this for a cooler engine any day. :-)

Stewart

Surely Porsche designed the underside tray with cooling in mind ie to manage the airflow (to help keep it on the ground) and cooling. To take that off would compromise the design. We all know that Porsche engineering is always for a purpose, rather than necessarily to look good.