The first thing to do is screw your oil cap back in place!
The insulation helps prevent your hood from getting hot. So if you remove it, there's a chance the paint on your hood might warp. I remember a college friend. Her name was Amy and she was an art student. She had an old AMC something or other. She painted the whole car with swirls of reds and yellows and greens. The paint on the hood warped and she could not figure out why it was only the paint on the hood that warped when the paint on the rest of the car was untouched. I explained there was an engine under the hood and the engine got hot when was driving.
Duh! Well, she was an art student, not a physics major.
Of course, the latex paint she used is much more likely to warp than the paint on your car, but I expect, without the insulation, after a few weeks you'll see the paint on the hood peeling away in flakes.
Drive long enough, and you should see smoke rolling out from under the hood! I don't know if the oil would actually catch fire, but I expect it would start smoking at the very least. If you have to drive to an auto parts store without the insulation, you're better off doing as much highway driving as possible. That means lots of fast air rushing through the engine bay and keeping it cooler. And it would probably take three or four weeks for the paint to start peeling anyway, though that's a guess.
I suggest you remove the oil soaked insulation. It's held in with big fasteners. The insulation has a cut in it and each fastener was pressed in between the cut. It's just a plastic do dad with plastic barbs. You could also pull the plastic fasteners out, hold the insulation up and then press each fastener back in place, but that wears down the barbs so they are less likely to stay in place. Not a huge deal though.
You can call your local auto parts stores and ask about buying a new roll of under hood insulation, or you could get an old piece from a junk yard. You can use the old, oil soaked piece as a pattern if you buy new insulation. Just be sure to put the old piece onto the new piece with the oil soaked side facing up. Then cut away with a big pair of scissors or tin snips. Remember to cut slits for the fasteners. When you install, you only need to hold up the piece where the next fastener goes. It's pretty simple really.
Thanks for the memory:
You could also boost your memory by taking DMAE. It's made from fish oil. Your brain turns it into acetylcholine, which is the biochemical part of short term memory. It really helped me when I was a student! I did very well on my exams. (Don't confuse it with DHEA, for boosting energy and testosterone.)
It will also help your memory if you cut down or eliminate sugar and corn syrup. Sugar spikes your insulin and high insulin creates tangles of brain cells and proteins called beta-amyloid plaques. Those plaques are like permanent traffic jams in your brain. They stop brain signals from reaching their destination. Then you can't remember where you put your keys and adding a column of numbers is challenging.
A high sugar diet is one cause of Alzheimer's Disease, along with aluminum. I remember chatting with a nurse. She said, “Every Alzheimer's patient I ever knew was a sugar junky.”
Then you'll remember to put the oil cap back in place.
I study paleoanthropology and nutrition, so I read a lot of these helpful tips.
Best wishes and a happy autumn to you and your family, Anthony :thumbsup:
