My exhaust rattles hardcore SOMETIMES. I changed the muffler...and took off my hollowed out cat and replaced it with a "test pipe" I have looked under the car and the exhaust is not loose. the hangers and clamps are fine. I can not figure this out. I even tried pulling the exhaust manifold heat shields away from the manifolds. Can I just remove the whole shield??? I need help with this badly.

 

the "rattle" you are referring to happens inside of the muffler the reason for this is your lack of a catalytic converter.... solution would be change test pipe to a cat or throw on a gay little ricer exhaust only way to get rid of the rattle

 

The sound is coming from the front end of the car. Why would I have to put a cat back on? It had a hollowed out cat since 1999 and it just started making this noise.

 

i did a cat delete on my car and got the same noise your referring to
sounded like the whole exhaust was about to fall off
and it quiets down a little when the car warms up

 

The cat that was on the car before was just a hollow shell. you could see striaght through it. The guy who had the car before me got that done so it would look like a cat but just flow stright through. It didnt rattle when that was on there for like 10 years. It started rattling awhile back and we took that off and just put a pipe in its place. same idea just looks different. SO IF it was an exhaust manifold shield...could I just remove them?

 

in theory yes but you will stand possibility of melting anything nearby...

and to the individual that hollowed out his cat..... this creates back pressure and actually costs you horsepower
smack him in the head

 

I recently fixed a rattle on my 96 3.8 after months of chasing it down. I put a dowel rod to my ear with the engine running. I could hear more noise when I put the dowel rod to the y-pipe than on the cluth housing or transmission. Try (with the engine off) to bang on the y-pipe with your hand to see if it rattles. Mine rattled all the time. Annoying goose chase for months. Finally took the y-pipe & cat off to see if anything fell out. Nothing fell out, but located my rattle. The long part (driver side) of the y-pipe is constructed of a pipe inside a pipe that had come loose. I drilled about five 1/8" holes across it and pop-rivited the two pipes together. Covered the rivets in exhaust patch putty before and after putting them in place. Doesn't rattle anymore and is about 300-400 bux less than y-pipe/cat replace.

 

Tex that sounds like a more plausible solution. Thanks I will have to check it out.

 

On my 96 3.8 there was an exhaust rattle between the front seats. It was where one of the clamps is around the exhaust pipe, and it had snapped right next to the clamp.

 

I got an appointment for tomorrow to get that dual layer pipe drilled and welded. Hope it works.