busted cat.. confirmed

[treed2 at wsu.edu (T. Reed)]

So I've had a really loud rattle for a couple of weeks now and I finally
got a chance to get underneath and pull the midpipe off the cat so I could
verify my diagnosis of a bad cat.

Sure enough, the top half of the honeycomb was missing entirely (ie. it
relocated itself to my muffler), and the bottom half was rattling like
crazy. I hammered the schlitz out of the remaining bits and revved the
engine up to 4000 rpm or so to blow out out the pieces.

Now I've got no cat, but at least the car is quiet. In its weakened form
it wasn't doing anything for emissions anyway, so no loss there. I just
passed my emissions test 6 months ago, so I have another 18 to the car
fixed.

I have another cat, which I cut off a spare downpipe with a bad flex
coupling. But it needs to be welded on. Anybody know if the factory
cat + downpipe are stainless? (I think they are..?) If so I'm gonna have
to find somebody with TIG gear to weld that puppy on to my downpipe.

Also, in the course of my swearing and hammering trying to seperate the
midpipe and downpipe, I wound up breaking off the metal hanger tab on the
downpipe. So now the weight of the whole exhaust system is resting on the
flex coupling and the three muffler hangers. Not good, methinks. Anybody
have experience with this problem and the short-term (and long-term)
effects of driving it like this anyway? I'm afraid of breaking the flex
coupling again and having a noisy, passenger-monoxiding car again.

Oh and I've still got to take the muffler off to try to shake out all the
honeycomb bitlets that are trapped inside and rattling towards the rear of
the car. But my muffler and midpipe are basically rust-welded together.
This is gonna be fun..

Sheesh

-Toby