w210 Cat converter repair

[woodturner-fran]

OK,

so I was driving along last Saturday and noticed a bit of a rattle from underneath the car but didn't think too much of it. Noticed again later on in the day and had a bit of a listen and thought it might be somehting a bit loose etc etc.

I take a look tonight and find that the cat rattles if you give it a thump i.e. like the honeycomb bricks inside are loose.

Now, not wanting to spend the shekels on a new one, is there any way I can repair this thing so taht it doesn't rattle? I was thinking of trying to get some fire cement or gun gum down into it to take up the slack and stop it rattling.

I have had no deterioration in performance so I'm thinking that the cat is still working although on the way out

any ideas anyone?

Fran

 

[Ray J]

In my limited experience of CAT's. It sounds like it's knackered and will fail an MOT.

Ray

 

[MondeoMan]

I've had cats do this, it's breaking up inside and will evenually clog the exhaust. Try driving a car that won't go over 1200 rpm, it ain't fun! Start saving.

 

[woodturner-fran]

update:

the CAT started rattling so bad that it was really annoying me so I took out the exhaust the other night and removed all the ceramic material from the cat box. I have almost 2 years to go to my next NCT so failing emissions wasn't a high priority! I hadn't anything to lose cos the cat was probably knackered anyway and the rattles were bad.

Put it all back together and started her up - runs grand. there is only 1 sensor on this model and its before the cat so the engine ran fine/fuel air mix AOK. However when I test drove it, the poor car sounds like a souped honda civic with a performance exhaust and a young fella with a baseball cap turned backwards driving it! Definitley not up to merc standards! So I bit the bullet today and ordered a new CAT for it, got a reasonable deal in the end so I'm happy enough.

I know I went through the work of taking out the cat but at least now it will be dead easy to refit cos I replaced the bolts etc etc when I was at it.

So unless you want your car to sound like a boy racer's then just go a replace the CAT.

BTW I looked into a universal replacement but with the bends etc in the exhaust it was going to be impossible to weld it back to the correct shape.

Fran

 

[Tony]

Where did you buy the cat from Fran? BTW, I hope you were pretty careful when removing the cat because they do contain toxic stuff.

 

[woodturner-fran]

Cat is coming from german swedish and french ?423 inc vat.

as to the toxic stuff, a windy day with the wind blowing the right direction!

Fran