Rattling Clanking Banging Noises Coming From the Engine While You Drive Might be Heat Shields

Do you hear that noise? I hear it all the time, but no one's ever in the car. What is it? And I know you've heard it once or twice in your lifetime, whether it's your car, a friend's car, or a family car, and then you bring it someplace and they go, "Oh, sorry, no noise. I didn't hear anything." Like, you got nothing better to do but bring your car someplace to hear a mystic noise. Well, I'm gonna tell you what it is. Heat shields. All right, here we are. We raised the car up, and we have the dreaded heat shields. Oh, how many times have I gotten these phone calls? How many times have you had to deal with it and be like, "What is that," or, you know, the significant other, "What is that noise?" Ugh, it's the heat shield. You're fine, drive, but it is annoying. I'll give you that. And unfortunately, they're not easy to take care of because some of these systems are, like, pinned over and they got factory spot welds on them or they put these washers on them, where if something reaches 400 degrees and it just disintegrates. And what are we gonna do? Like this one has a converter off the manifold, right? That's the heat shield. Ready? Oh, what a nightmare. But I can't get rid of the heat shield because if I do, technically, it's protecting the radiator. It's protecting the AC converter, which happens to be right next to it. If I get the shield gone, that converter is gonna radiate so much heat that you can cook your breakfast, your lunch, and your dinner on that all day long. So we can't get rid of it but we have to come up with a solution to keep the shield on. Well, some people say, "Use an oversized metal clamp," right? Let me get you one. This, this right here, yeah, and it's good temporary. If you're gonna sell the car on the side of the road, use this. But this is what happened. This has only been two weeks. I'll give you a month. See, look how hot it got, snapped right in half. And we still have the same headache. So let's go along together and figure out how we can stop this noise. So there are three bolts that hold the shield on this front part of this converter. Bottom one's completely gone. The bracket is a welded bracket on the converter, the bracket's gone.

So that's out of hope. But I have two other ones up here. There's no heads on the bolts but there's one here and one over here on the same side. I'm gonna try while it's still hot to see if I come back those broken, rotted bolts out. If they don't break, I'm gonna see if I can add a bolt and washer to both sides. Let's see if we can stop this noise. So I got it. I got one out over here and the harder the one to reach, I got to turn it. So we're gonna get that out. And then I'm gonna make some sort of bolt and washer system, then we're gonna tighten this up, and let's see how long it lasts. A little perseverance and look what pays off. Oh, I get it out of there. It looks like a mask. So, here we go. Here's the broken parts. And here, looks like on the inside. See that bracket? That's supposed to be welded to the converter. That's missing. And what happens is the tin rots away, and then the steel bracket stays stuck in there, and the spacer and the washer. That actually had insulation on it so it wouldn't break down because the rubber would just obviously disintegrate. But we're gonna build something because this has to go back in to protect that radiator. So I like to keep a lot of junk in our little used box that I find. So I had some leftover shock absorbers for the top of the rubber and their washers. And they just happen to be the right size for this hole. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put some high temp RTV on this rubber bushing, I'm gonna put it like...like that, then I'm gonna put this washer over it, have it RTV super at. Then I'm gonna take this and go on the outside, bring it right through, and bolt it in that bracket. Let's see if it worked.

Okay. Hmm. Let's line it up first. There you go.

Well, it worked. And I gotta say, I have kind of a great idea. Let's hope those washer and rubber bushings don't, like, catch on fire. No, I don't think they will. They should be fine. I put double washers on there to keep the heat from it and there's an airflow through the heat from the converter. So this is solid and I don't think it's gonna be rattling anytime soon. Well, I hope you enjoyed that video and I hope it helps you out if you have that rattling noise. If you are not a subscriber, please subscribe. Don't forget to ring that bell. That turns on all your notifications so you won't miss any future videos.