Help me diagnose a noise 911 SC content

Woody wrote:

mad_machine wrote: somehow I am not sure that cat will rattle

You can always try.

wear thick gloves

Besides making a lot of bolts glow cherry red and managing to break off the first actual exhaust bolt I tried to loosen I haven't made much progress.

In the meantime a spider took up residence in the wheel well I would be working in when I get back to it. I would only see it in the evening when I went in the garage to change loads of laundry. This is Fl and we have lots of spiders so I ignored it. Then I noticed its red belly, decided it was probably not a black widow, but it was taunting me so it deserved to die. Well starter fluid may make humans infertile and your entire garage stink but apparently it doesn't kill spiders. Several days pass and the gloating spider started to annoy me again so I sprayed it with carb cleaner which caused it to curl into a tiny ball and presumably die. Tonight I was informed by my wife that not only was it not dead but a doppelganger spider had taken up residence in the front wheel well. I sprayed them with WD40 (hey-the real poison didn't make the move to the new house) She got a little freaked, went all librarian on me (is a librarian) and concluded that they are Black or Brown Widow spiders. I went out to check on them and found this:

100's of babies. A midnight trip to WalMart ensued and there is now a fogger in each wheel well. Die arachnid scum!

Don't you have tools? I mean... I usually just squash/stab/poke them with whatever is handy. They are not nearly as tough as Discovery Channel would have you believe with all those close-ups of scary fangs and beetles that have been sucked dry. Just bust that thing in the center of all those legs and they cease to be.

In reply to Giant Purple Snorklewacker:

The first few times I tried to kill it it scurried away rather quickly before I got within 5 feet of it. I needed a more long range weapon. I do have to confess that after I sprayed them with stuff and they were lying there squashable I didn't because I wanted to see if the current chemical would actually kill them. Apparently it just made them multiply.

Oh crap... they're Mogwai spiders.

For some reason, spiders love my garage. I can't even count the number of spiders I've laid on, had go down my shirt, whatever. Thank god I live in Ohio; we don't have widow spiders here. We do have the brown recluse but it's not prone to garage style living unless you've got a lot of rotting wood in the garage. The worst I've had from a spider bite was a lump that took a few weeks to heal.

Spiders scare me, especially when they're somewhere I want to work. Too many poisonous spiders in these parts to not be careful.

The foggers work well, but I'd be quick to get residue off of the car in case it had chemicals that reacted to paint in it.

So I have been ignoring the 911 because every effort to get the exhaust nuts off just strips them or breaks them. It has been taunting me several times a because I have to walk by it every time I leave the house. My Diata wrenching got cancelled today so I decided to work on the 11. My plan was to just break all the nuts off and deal with the consequences later. Well the nuts didn't want to break so I blew an entire morning breaking 4 and removing one nut. That should have freed up the front flange. Nope! No amount of big hammer, crowbar, screwdriver between the flanges persuasion budged it. I packed in up around lunch and spent the rest of the day playing daddy. Fast forward to post bedtime and I am sitting around bored and annoyed that I didn't get that damn cat off. I decided it would only be a little work with the sawzall to cut the damn thing off and the kids would probably just fall right back asleep anyway.

Good news:

More good news:

So the cat is shot. The 3rd "brick" in the cat is in pieces with a large chunk bouncing around. The second brick has a hole with some parts missing. Hopefully this the source of my noise. Now to get the cat inlet and outlet flanges the rest of the way off, get the bypass pipe installed, and figure out what roasted my cat.

late edit-I know there are 6 nuts, one was already broken off from earlier effort.

I, for one, am glad that you finally found the source of the noise. And that it wasn't coming from inside the engine.

MrJoshua wrote: And figure out what roasted my cat.

Darn trolls :D

Woody wrote: I, for one, am glad that you finally found the source of the noise. And that it wasn't coming from inside the engine.

Me too. I am curious what roasted the cat. My brief PelicanParts forum browsing makes me want to learn more about the fuel injection and possible mixture problems. The O2 sensor was unplugged and apparently that is the right thing to do. I do enjoy having a car with an active, intelligent, and internet savvy following.

You weren't doing it right if you couldn't get them off hot, go hotter.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: You weren't doing it right if you couldn't get them off hot, go hotter.

I may have welded them on.

When they are hot... Use candle wax.. The heat will will pull it in... I have had more luck with this old school technique than anything else..

I've seen old techs remove nuts from exhaust systems so far gone you could see through parts of the nut. Using nothing but an oxy torch.

ronholm wrote: When they are hot... Use candle wax.. The heat will will pull it in... I have had more luck with this old school technique than anything else..

Interesting.

When I rescued the car, the throttle was frozen wide open. Now that I've seen this, I wouldn't be surprised if the cat got loaded with fuel at some point. Was the stuff inside melted or just broken?

Mostly just broken, with slight evidence of melting.

Bypass pipe is on and the noise is gone! Now that I can actually drive the thing aggressively it is quite a fun car. Steering is heavy and the oooooooooooold tires don't grip well, but it is a torquey motor that is willing to spin in a flat cornering chassis with awesome brakes. Now to chase the oil leak and start making it prettier.

0-70 or so

They're nice above five grand, aren't they?

Woody wrote: They're nice above five grand, aren't they?

They are indeed. The motor has a really nice personality. Smooth and torquey and willing to lug around in third gear below 20mph like a big motor, and then willing to shoot to the redline like a small 4.

Check out the torque curve in the back of the owner's manual. This is from a '79, but you get the idea. The numbers aren't huge, but there's torque everywhere.