OK guys, for a little while now my exhaust has had a hollow rattle. I was just under the car looking and kicking **** trying to recreate the noise. Appears to be the passenger side catalyst's bottom heat shield (the one that keeps you from setting the grass on fire). Looked closer and found that one of the four securing stud/nuts is snapped off. The other three are tight.

From the look of it, and granted my vantage point sucked - lying sideways on the driveway with the car jacked up, it appears that there are studs cast into the cat that poke through the heat shield and use a nut to thread onto the stud and secure the shield - can anyone confirm? It's snapped off and pretty rusty so I can't really tell. If its actually a bolt that screws into the cat's casing then I'll try and remove the remains and put a new one in. If it is a stud, any ideas on how to fix this? The rattle is driving me insane.

Thanks in advance for any ideas. I'm going to temporarily remove the heat shield until I can solve this but I do want it back on since I'm decently low and do park in the grass sometimes - don't want a fire scorching my lawn and burning the car to the ground lol. For those who don't know, it's a 99 30vqm.

 

Here's a couple crappy cell-cam shots to give you kind of an idea:





Looking more closely, I'm not sure if it's a stud now or a bolt going through the heat shield, and the heat shield's bolt-hole is rusted out too wide for the bolt to hold it. Anyone have a call on this?

 

I text you about it last night, but looking at bigger pictures now on my lap top I'm not so sure... I'd say take it off and look at the ones that AREN'T rusted to **** lol

 

Lol exactly my plan when I get home from work.

 

Ria: You want a lesson? I'll give you a lesson. How 'bout a geography lesson? My father's from Puerto Rico. My mother's from El Salvador. Neither one of those is Mexico.
Graham: Ah. Well then I guess the big mystery is, who gathered all those remarkably different cultures together and taught them all how to park their cars on their lawns?


Maybe if you got rid of the seventeen baby strollers that occupy your garage, then the shitbox 13 year old pile with a quarter million miles would have somewhere less "mexican" to park.. jus sayin

 

LMAO I park it on the lawn because I get home before Shannon does and I leave before her in the morning. I'm too lazy to bother ******* around jockeying cars around to get out. It's the trade off I make having a single width driveway, vato

 

Single driveway, married life...

 

...and a minivan taking up space in part of it. It's all good - wouldn't trade it for anything.

 

Turns out that I guess they are bolts thanks to confirmation from Doc DePalma. I have to take his word for it though since when I went under to remove the shield, each one snapped off in turn, until the last one, which rounded the head off. Smaller sockets didn't work, vise grips didn't work, so I went postal for a couple minutes with my air chisel. Ruined that thing's ****. In the pic, the corpse of the bolt/stud/whatever is sitting on the shield.



Once it was off, I smacked the cat and still heard a little noise but took the car for a run. There's still a little noise decelerating in gear during the last 500RPM drop to idle but that's it. I'd say 90% of the noise is gone. Apparently what remains is loose catalyst inside the housing. For the time being, screw it. Eventually I'll have to replace the cat but for now I'm OK with it.

Appreciate the replies both here and by text, guys - I'm calling this one a TKO, not an outright win, but a good result nonetheless.