Exhaust rattle fix (at least for now)

(2005 Short-bed doublecab, 56,000 miles)

I started getting the famous "exhaust rattle" at about 50,000 miles. It sounded like a heat shield thing, so I wasn't too worried about it. I also had worked in the woods of Maine for a week in the middle of summer (at the New England Forest Rally - http://www.newenglandforestrally.com - if you're close, you DEFINITELY should go next year), which involved bombing my truck down rally stages before and after the racers. In short, I thought I bent something simple to bend back.

I crawled underneath, and with some exploratory sonic impact assessments (whacked on stuff with a hammer until I could track down the location of the rattle) I found it was coming not from a bent heat shield, but from what looks to be an integrated heat shield around a catalytic converter. I found that if I held the top and bottom together tightly, there was no rattle. I also found the bolts that usually do the holding were rusted, and would not survive re-tightening.

Not wanting to live with this until I replace the exhaust, I performed the following "repair." The space immediately under this post is for you to make fun of me, but before you do: that puppy has been dead silent since

Here's a pic taken from just under the driver-side tube step, pointing towards the passenger side. I'd apologize for the crap photo, but I was dressed for work and wasn't going to crawl around for an artistically-perfect shot. It clearly shows the aforementioned heat shield, and my three approximately foot-long pieces of stripped 12-gauge electrical wiring made into the beefiest twist-ties ever. I've put 200 miles on since the repair, and it's looking and sounding great.



I'm curious about others' thoughts on this, and thanks for reading.

 

That pos drives me crazy. I had to go back to the dealership because I was convinced something was wrong.

 

HA. I just did the same fix as you. Only I just put one copper wire in the middle. Then, used a screw driver to pry apart the inner and outer shields on the outlet side which seemed to completely stop the rattle. Much better now. See how long it lasts.

 

Good fix IMO. The Copper should last.

Now if you had used an old wire coat hanger, it would be a different story!

 

Thank you for figuring this one out.

 

hokey