Like the title says, I have an '03 V8 4wd 4runner ~134k miles. We were on a weekend trip up to the mountains and had a bit of an "oh sh!t" situation when I discovered my rear exhaust shield (where the exhaust kicks up and over the rear axle) was smoking heavily and had a smoldering fire propagating through it.

We drove close to 3 hours with no issues, did a quick 2 hour hike, and continued on our last 40 minute commute up the mountains to the top of Whitetop mountain. Right before we got to the top (~1200-1500 ft elevation gain) we smelled what we thought was someone having a fire going. Just for the hell of it, I pulled over to check things out on the car (first long trip after getting everything done, lift, timing belt, bumper, rtt, etc).

Sure enough, as I got out I saw a little smoke coming out of the rear of the car. I thought maybe a caliper siezed up and my brakes were overheated. After further investigation I saw pinpointed the smoke to a smoldering heatshield just above the rear axle where the exhaust kicks over. I didn't entertain the idea of taking pictures and what not prior to putting it out a little and then ripping off the still-smoldering piece of heatshield , and now I wish I had..

My first thought was that the morons at the muffler shop welded the hangers wrong after installing the new muffler a couple of months ago...but after doing a quick search I found the same exact issue on a stock car from 2006 where a guy was towing a boat and his shield caught fire as well and he did the same thing, but at a gas station.

Anyhow, pretty damn shitty feeling when you're at 5600 ft on a service road (even with a fire extinguisher in the back) to have something like this happen. I am now looking to get back under the car and apply some stick-on heat shield material I have left over from doing some hood heat-proofing on my turbo supra earlier in the year as there are a couple of wires/lines that run through there just to keep the heat off of them.

This heat shield material was something like you find on the firewall I guess, not really sure what it is. Just couldn't believe that the exhaust would get so hot to actually catch it on fire. The engine is purring away with 0 issues and 0 codes, so not like it is running stupid lean to get that hot.

But anyhow, not big crisis from it, but figured I would at least document it hear for whoever might possibly come across the same issue at some point..