I had a bad grinding noise that sounded like the brake dust shield hittin the rotor. turns out the aluminum heat shield above the muffler fell off and was hitting the drive shaft.

Question is do i really need this heat shield? or can i run without? its a pretty light weight one, not like the one above the cat.

any thoughts?

Toyota put it there for a reason. I fixed mine by removing the nuts that retain it to the studs, and adding some fender washers to hold the shield in place. It cost less than two bucks to fix.

Your exhaust will get very very hot. Not sure if you remember the Firestone/ford tire explosion of death issue that happened in the late 90's, but it was the result of a weak tire in connection with the proximity of the exhaust.

Those two things had to be together. The very same Firestone tire, placed on other SUV's didn't appear to have the problem. It was that unique occurance that occurred due to the weak design and the closeness to exhaust components on the late 90's explorer.

I have no idea what is around there, but that heat shield is "shielding" your truck and modern cars burn much hotter than older vehicles to fully burn all of the combustion products.....

So. Should you run without a heat shield when you do not know all of the results? No.

You wanna risk it, go for it. It may just heat up that section of your truck, giving your puppy a warm spot to sit in... or the heat may degrade, warp or otherwise destroy a pretty important component...

Just don't park over dry grass with no heat shield. Cars have been known to actually catch the grass on fire doing that.

If he is talking about the aluminum heat shield over the muffler, it is designed to deflect heat from the muffler down tword the ground to protect the floor area just above the muffler, not protect the ground. And, I believe most of those fire stories involved the cat getting way too hot, not the muffler. I have seen cats get so hot they glow, from the engine running too rich and the unburned fuel mixture getting to the cat causing it to overheat. I have never seen a muffler get that hot.