1991 Ford Ranger heat shield?

My heat shield was removed for other repairs and left off by mechanic. Can someone explain to me, as if I were a child, where it goes and how to put it back on?

There can be different 'heat shields' on a car - Which one specifically?

I'd go back to that mechanic and insist that he complete the job by replacing it.

My guess is that if it were easy to put that heat shield back on after whatever work was done, the mechanic would have just taken the 2 minutes to fasten it back on. It's possible that the shield had to be fastened back in place BEFORE the remainder of the car was re-assembled… And whoever worked on the car may have forgotten to put it back on before reassembling everything else. It might be difficult to impossible to get the shield where it needs to go and to fasten it back into place properly without disassembling/reassembling whatever was done to the truck.

I agree with 'mustanger' - I'd ask the shop to put the shield back properly since you paid them to do the job right and, well, they didn't do it right. The shield was on the truck for a reason. It may be to protect the truck from exhaust heat… Or it may be to keep exhaust heat from setting grass on fire etc., if the truck is parked somewhere off the road while running/hot. Either way, you probably want it on there.

Once upon a time…

What I would say to a child is, go to the library and look in a Chilton's Auto Repair manual about that particular vehicle. The librarian would help him find the pictures and understand the text of the manual. If you search youtube by key words, you can find video on doing that job; search for 1991 Ford Ranger exhaust, heat shields.

There's one around the catalytic converter on my Ranger. There's also one around my muffler.