my mgf had a rattle i could not find it for mths then a member pointed me towards the cat sure enough the internals had broken free
Ron

 

I assume youve checked the rubber mounts the exhaust hangs on? My exhaust is rattling like a crazy drunk man currently... Issue is i cant get the ******** cheese bolt out! So music gets turned up... SO annoying

 

Rubber mounts



When I first got the car the left-hand exhaust pipe seemed to have a lot of movement, almost hitting the surrounding moulding and indeed the left-hand back-box mounting rod had come out of the rubber mount. The mount itself looked askew and the u-bolt holding it on must have taken a whack as it was quite bent out of shape. I removed it and straightened it out and when I reassembled everything it all lined up and fitted perfectly so bullet dodged there. When I heard this noise I thought that might have come adrift again but it is still as the day I did it so it has to be something else. Just my luck its the cat - or whatever the most expensive part is to fix!

Thanks for the suggestions and many apologies for the appalling spelling in my original post - I think I got most of it sorted now!

Dave.

 

Might be worth checking the oil filler, the bracket has a habit of snapping and causing an annoying rattle.

 

And the heat sheild bolts havent rusted off, that rattles a bit if its too loose. Unlikely though. Or the support Braces int he engine bay being loose.

 

Check the flexipipe first. They have a habit of letting go slowly and making no end of weird and wonderful noises. Might be the cat, worth checking. After that it might be the internals of the silencer which isn't good and means dead silencer really. Might be anything though so identify the source first. Get some solid axle stands and then get under again.

 

Shortly after I bought my F I aquired a rattle from the exhaust and occasional loss of power. sure enough it was the cat internals that had collapsed, bits of which partially obstructed the outlet and ocasionally dumped bits of honeycomb into the box.

 

Shortly after I bought my F I acquired a rattle from the exhaust and occasional loss of power. sure enough it was the cat internals that had collapsed, bits of which partially obstructed the outlet and occasionally dumped bits of honeycomb into the box.

Indeed, check the flexihose then the cat then the rear box. shouldn't take long

 

My flex pipe went recently. Was fun getting the cat to downpipe bolts off...

You need to get acquainted and friendly with an angle grinder.....

To get the downpipe off and a new one fitted heres what I did...

Removed the cover off the engine bay, disconnected the lambdas.

Then jacked the car up and put big ramps underneath.

Attacked the cat nuts with a grinder and hammered the stumps out.

Then undid the 6 15mm bolts from the downpipe then cut a piece off the downpipe and took off the cat and moved everything away.

Then from the downpipe that came off removed the lambda (22mm open ended spanner needed)

Then fitted lambda back to new downpipe and put all back together.

A nice collage of the various bits here:

Good news for me the big deep rattle and blowing has gone... But replaced by a annoying tick tick tick noise. I don't have a bomb so i need to do some remedial work.

I'm guessing its either a loose manifold nut, the engine plate rattling, heatsheild or one of the three gaskets not being alined properly.

I'm starting with the easy stuff first

 

Hi mate,

I had a really annoying rattle for quite a while on mine. I noticed it when I pulled off, it was like a rattling/vibrating sort of noise.

Turned out it was a heat shield around the exhaust area that was loose, so the garage glued this back to where it should be and the rattle was gone!!

 

Cheers

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll get under the car and have a closer look at all those points of interest.

 

Mine turned out to be the cat heat shield...

http://forums.mg-rover.org/showthread.php?t=255890&highlight=cat+rattle

Cheap/easy fix if it is that at least. Still fine now.