Helping the Vintage Air

[AcampoDave]

Summers can be brutal where I live and a classic truck would be no fun without air. Today I took a long drive in triple digits and even with the A/C blasting I still wished my cab was cooler. Granted it will never be as cool as a modern truck but I have done my due diligence with regard to weatherstripping and a lot of insulating on the floor and firewall. Today, however when I got home from a 90 minute run, I reached under the dash and felt my steering column. Wow.... surprisingly hot. That promted me to open the hood and feel the column tube under there and the underhood portion was too hot to leave my hand on indefinitely. The part outside of the inner fender however wasn't too bad. Certainly, it's because of the exhaust manifold and I'm thinking about making a heat shield for the column and attaching it to the bolts on the removabe pass through cover where the column goes through the inner fender. I'm not sure yet how I'll do it, but that heat can't be good for the lower bearing on my column and I sure don't like it the cab. I'm open to suggestions if anyone cares to chime in. Thanks for reading.