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Thanks for the kind words, I mainly posted my story for fear of others safety.
I agree that most of the problem was radiant heat transfer, aggravated by the reflective aluminum panel right under the exhaust reflecting the additional rays back up. Without the belly pan though, the convective heat transfer of the cool air blowing up under the car would have removed all that built up heat. With the belly pan though there was only a limited amount of air that could not remove the heat. Hence problem.
The more I think about the issue with the exhaust heating, the solution I like is instead of trying to only deal with the heat after it has left the exhaust, but first to significantly reduce the heat transfer out of the exhaust pipes. Several ways would be ceramic coating the exhaust system, using exhaust wraps, putting the exhaust pipe within another pipe, putting reflective barriers or other insulation above the exhaust pipe. Additionally, going a step further in complexity the exhaust or exhaust cover could be made with a flat bottom where the bottom of the exhaust was actually part of the belly pan, but allowing direct conductive cooling of the exhaust or outer exhaust cover.
As I said before, it is just thinking, time, money, and effort.
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