I am looking to take the shields off my cats because I think they are causing a rattle at 1k rpm when cold (goes away after 20 min of being on). Can they be removed with a ratchet and socket only or do they need to be cut off? Thanks.

Sorry for asking a question that's easily answerable by getting under the car but I can't do that right now.

 

more than likely the cat is close to the shield... take a pry bar and bend it some... me personally i wouldn't take it off

**edit, re-read it, do you have factory cats? are you talking about the heat shields on the body or the cat itself?

 

They don't bolt on, you would need to cut 'em off, but like Trav said I'd leave on. Try to make sure the rattle is coming from the shields and if you have no doubt then possible bend/s, etc. Hope you can find the problem.

 

if factory cats, i am wondering if the honeycomb is breaking apart

 

The shields around the cats are like sleeves. When i was messing with them the sleeve moved and was loose causing a rattle. I pushed the shield as much as i could and it went away. If you want to remove youll need to cuz them off

 

Thanks everyone. I'm going to hold off on taking it to a muffler shop and having them torch them off. Will live with it for now until I can get back to my jacks and poke around the shields to see if that's the cause.

Travlee - I have the factory cats with the sleeve type shields. In the OP I was referring to the sleeves but I will also check out the heat shields behind/above the cats when I get under there. I'm about 90% sure it's coming from the cat area though so it's gotta be something around there.

 

Kind of on topic...my factory cats heat shield was literally falling off so i pulled it the rest of the way off. Any problems running it without the heat shield on the cat? If it is a problem then can I get just a heat shield somewhere? Or would you just wrap it with exhaust wrap and go on? This also might be a prime time to go with test pipes and Indiana doesn't do emissions testing.

 

you may get more heat in the cabin with it off

 

Ill probably pick up some wrap and just wrap them up....Both of my heat shields are loose. Test pipes sound like a nice thing but I can always put those on later.

Chad