Doing a spot of pre-festivities wrapping today.
Exhaust wrap and ties from eBay.
Cut a few slits in the packaging and leave in a bucket of water while you strip the carb' and inlet manifold out of the way.
Plan your route and make sure you do a little at a time trying the inlet manifold between sections to make sure you have clearance.
Reassemble and let the engine run until the water in the wrap stops steaming before you take the car out anywhere.
Manifold gaskets are very tolerant to this sort of thing while they are new. I tend to add a couple of lbs to the torque setting every time until it's too much and I need to replace it again.
Some will probably wonder why not take the exhaust off and do it on a bench. If the engine was cross flow I would have but because I needed to make sure the inlet manifold would go back on it had to remain in place.
Why wet the wrap? Newer ones and the expensive Titanium weave stuff doesn't need to be damp but that's how I've always done it and find the wrap more malleable when wet.
Why do it in the first place? I've fitted unleaded valves to the head while it was off so I don't have to use the lead additive stuff. This means the fuel burns hotter as it has a higher calorific value and has a lower evaporation/boiling/flash point. First time out the car was fine but when I did a bit of a run and needed to head off again after a short stop the fuel was boiling in the carb' float chamber. To compensate for this I've insulated the exhaust manifold to hopefully reduce the amount of heat transfer from the exhaust to inlet manifold. If this doesn't work I'll look at either a better heat shield or cooling system for it.
