David's tip proved useful - I listened to the rattle and explored a bit further to discover that the problem is indeed where the downpipes enter the cat. No.2 pipe is the worst with little perforations right in the joint, and no.3 looks dodgy. I'd thought it bad enough trying to replace the muffler, but here I am, counting the hours before a 1500+ mile trip and "S**T, How am I going to solve this in time?". I go for the quick option of a trip to store for exhaust putty and I've applied that - we'll see if it works and keeps me going for the next couple of weeks. There's already too much on the Credit Card, and my lovely lady is starting to worry about the expense, especially with the trip coming up. And to cap it all, she's not coming with me - well it's her own fault - she chickened out, so I'm taking my 12 year old son instead!
Robin On Mon, 20 May 2002 11:38:02 +0100, uranus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Although some of the silencer internals may be damaged, another strong >possibility is that the cat or part of the collector has broken up and is >now rattling around inside the silencer. Whatever the source of the >rattle, the cat/collector assembly is mild steel, very exposed to road >dirt/spray and surely is going to fail in normal service before the >silencer does. >In trying to find the source of the rattles I also inspected the collector >assembly, and saw that it was pretty damn rusty, expecially on the the >centre two pipes that are directly behind the front wheel.
