hey. for some reason, when im driving my 95 accord ex (manual) ill occationally hear a rattling as is it came from a loose muffler, but the muffler is fine, and there is no leaks or breaks in it... has anyone had this problem?? or does anyone know what might it be??

I get the noise when i accelerate too quick... its a pretty loud (embarassing) rattling when standing outside the car... i just realized how loud it was today...

Usually those complaints turn out to be a loose heat shield, imports have shields all down the exhaust...around the cat, extention pipe, manifold, etc...sometimes the welds rust and they start to buzz or rattle, sometimes they get a rock or something caught in them that rattles at certain frequencies...

Take a broomstick or something and smack the shields under the car, see if you can produce the sound. If so, gotta figure what the problem is. I liked to use regular hose clamps around them to tighten them up and stop the sound. If it's a large shield, you can "chain" several clamps together end to end to go around it...if the welds are totally shot, I pull it off and throw it away...

Do i need the heat shields??
im going to change the exhust starting from the header all the way back, but id like to remove the heat shield, if its ok... im also going to remove the heat shield for the header... would the removal of the heat shield affect anything??

Not really...it's there to reduce liability more than anything else...Once you put a header on it's gotta go anyway. The ones under the car help keep the cat and pipe from setting fire to grass or leaves if you were dumb enough to park in tall dry grass or dry leaves..:lol:

Not really...it's there to reduce liability more than anything else...Once you put a header on it's gotta go anyway. The ones under the car help keep the cat and pipe from setting fire to grass or leaves if you were dumb enough to park in tall dry grass or dry leaves..:lol:

how about the rest of the heat shield?? the one connected to the chassis inbetween the exhust and the chasis?? should it go?? ALL OF IT?? cause i want to... but im not too sure...


BTW, i just purchased a DC header... what kind of catback should i get?? (company)

I've seen plently of them with no shielding...really above the cat is the only part I have any concern with...it's good to have something there...

You are on your own about performance parts for it...I'm not real Honda performance fluent....I'm sure someone here can reccommend something though...although in general, I think smaller diameter is better for preserving backpressure and low to mid torque and throttle response...big exhaust looks cool, but a mostly stock motor will only see gains at WOT with it...and how often is that? The rest of the time it saps power, sounds annoying, etc...

Personally I'd be looking for something that is just slightly larger than stock diameter, and opens very gradually towards the end, with a muffler with tuned chambering to improve backpressure scavenging, like the Flowmaster Delta Flow 30 series, I don't know if they have it for imports, but something similar is available, I'm sure...they sound great, near stock volume at idle, just lower pitch, but have that crackly bark when you bust on it...and they don't drone as bad on the road when cruising as some I've heard...

hmm... i see... very useful info. thanks a lot. i appriciate it, and ill definately look around for a muffler like that.