Plastic engine covers

what is this shit over my engine?
I really wanna remove it from my car because I want to see my shitbox's straight 4 in all its thirdworld glory.

what purpose do these plastic covers have? is it just aesthetics?
I read on the internet that it's just for looks (even though it looks terrible with them on) or to reduce cabin noise. Is this true? Do they have any practical purpose like keeping dust off or something I'm not thinking about right now?

the toyobaru twins don't have anything like this and I imagine a lot of other cars don't have it and they do just fine without it.

>tl;dr plastic engine cover purpose and can I safely remove it forever?

Normies are afraid of tubes and wires, so they'd rather have a big slab of plastic covering them. It does basically fuckall in most cases.

I forgot to mention, the car in question is a skoda and unlike some vw models I read about that have the plastic cover with a part covering the air filter or something this one is literally just held above the engine in 3 plastic plugs.
you literally just plug it into 3 plastic sockets.
also, the insulation or whatever that foamy thing is called under it is burnt around the oil cap. is this a cause for concern? will the engine catch on fire without this shit?

I know some VWs use the engine cover as part of the intake system, but if yours doesn't it shouldn't be a problem.
The engine shouldn't catch on fire unless there's something else majorly wrong.

thanks user, I'll remove it for a few weeks and see how things work out.
I'm actually excited for more engine and intake sound in the cabin desu

Just make sure removing it doesn't expose the throttle body or something, you don't want to suck air in without a filter.

Another one...noisy valvetrain and direct injection. Many of these covers have sound control materials pinned to them on the back side.

Useless plastic cover to scare normies... let's take it offTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICKTICK

I want to believe you're lying

>what is this shit over my engine?
In my GM car, it shields a lot of parts from having dirt clouds settle on them if you drive through a short term cloud of dirt. Removing it, I see lots of pipes and things connected to the engine and the area is really clean. I can imagine that if there was a lot of dust, removal of any pipes would need a lot of area cleaning first to prevent dirt from dropping into the openings.

>what is this shit over my engine?
As with the pad on the underside of the hood, it probably helps cause a time delay on the heat rising up to scald the underside of the hood. Have you ever seen those hoods where the paint has started to fall off in the middle of the hood? I bet the heat soak artificially aged the paint there.

>checked
probably helps against dust too, mine has a lot of dust on it and I'm too lazy to properly clean it, but I should probably get around to doing it.
this too probably, I know exactly what you're saying with the hoods, I've seen a few.

Sound insulation if it has foam of some type below it. Take it off and drive, especially on a direct injection car, or diesel the engine will be louder.

>this much plastic

I don't know man, it looks like you could burn yourself on that exposed metal

Why would they even leave that to chance?

This is an engine bay for a 50 year old chinese woman.

>Implying women ever open the hood

>Implying

>the toyobaru twins don't have anything like this

That's because they have boxer engines which means that they just pile everything else in the engine bay right on top of it.

I got rid of mine. Got tired of dealing with removing and putting it back on, so off it stayed.

>that spark plug change process

>something you need to do like once or maybe twice if you're lucky

Even when I had an EJ22, where the spark plugs were easy as pie with a U-joint extension, I just gave up even ever checking them because they never even needed regapping. This isn't your father's Oldsmobile.

ah now I see why used Subarus are always barely running.

orly

Companies do it to showcase an engine in the showroom, to legit keep dust and road grime out of intakes and components, and to discourage consumers from working on their own cars. If you're a wrencher and you have to remove all this shit just to get to the engine, would you?

Its only to discourage sheeple from working on their own cars. That is all.
Its just for the profit generating sheeple.

Literally nothing on my old VW 2.0
Just to hide the scary looking bits of the engine from faggots. Removed mine doing some minor engine work, never bothered to put it back on. Never caused me any problems

it's to reduce noise.

But what your saying is that you bought a car that came with giant pieces of plastic slapped all over the engine.

>hello welcome to mcdonalds
>can I please take your order
CLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKCLACKACLACKCLACKACLACK
>sir?
CLACKCLAKCLACKCLACKCLACKACLACKACLACK

Yes, it was cheap for a student and I got a great deal. Why would I care about VW trying to protect idiots from themselves and hide their ugly ass 4cyl

literally me, one of my cover mounts broke when i was doing my cai :(

heh...#savage

I think he's saying that they are for sound deadening with modern engines. My car can be heard ticking without it, being direct injection and complicated valve timing system, etc. They use these covers for aesthetics (because they want to hide the fact that their valve covers and intake manifolds are cheap shit now, back in the day engines looked good and didn't need covers) and to quiet the engine noises. No other use.