An aluminum skid plate is very doable, we can design it with air vents to help get rid of the heat from the manifold. If its fuel lines those don't get that hot anyway usually.
There is another advantage to running a skid plate, Improved aerodynamics.
Most of the drag created by a car is created under the chassis. The smoother and flatter you can make the chassis the more down force the car will generate, and the more stable it will be at high speeds. Thats why the underside of a 911 is so flat.
In theory a flat belly should make a significant difference.
Timothy, thank you I'll send you a pm to get your contact info. I'm going out of town for a little while but Andrew (by partner) will call you and set up a meet
harryrcb, I just sent you a Pm thanks for the help
Edit: oh I just remembered something, with exhaust you want the pipes to be as hot as possible so trapping the heat may actually be a good thing. The hotter the pipes the hotter the exhaust gases, the hotter the exhaust gases the greater the flow velocity inside the pipes. This will create more power, theoretically.
This is why header heat wraps and thermal coatings make power.
The danger would be transmitting heat to other components, but thats something we would compensate for during the design phase.
also this is a pretty cool shot from one of the tests we did. Its basically showing the temperature distribution through the tube.
This is assuming oil temperatures of 400 degrees and direct heat of 1075F on the tip.
Its not accurate because after we did it we found some other things we didn't factor in, in reality this part will never see any temperatures remotely close to this, because the heads are cooled by the cooling system. The idea behind doing this test is to make sure the part will not melt or expand under usage.