rattling noise

I have a stock 1995 v6 camaro. I put the car up on jacks, and found a metal piece laying ontop of my exhaust, all the bolts used to bolt it down were missing, causing the rattle....It was around the tranny. Anyone tell me what this is...im guessing some sort of heat shield but I don't know much about cars, and im probobly way off. anyway, can I drive without this piece for a while until I find correct bolt and nuts for it?

thanks

Andrew

yes, it looks like the heat shield..... you can drive without it, but not too far, because the heat of the cat is very high and not good for the environment...

will it hurt my car in any way driving without it?

I don't see how the heat of the cat is going to effect the enviroment???? Anyways, once I did my headers, the heat shields were rattling on them a little bit so I removed them and havn't had any side effects because of it.

okay, if you think the heat shield has no function I ask you why GM installed a shield in the cat area?

Its mainly there to keep the heat from the cat out of the interior cabin. Like I said, I had to remove them because they were hitting on the header and I haven't had any adverse effects. It would probably be a good idea to secure it back in place though as too much heat may not be good for your carpeting.

thanks for all the replys. I appreciate it.


andrew

No problem, I have had a couple cars in the past where those shields have just fallen off. Of course it happened while I was driving and it makes one heck of a banging noise that scared me to death. They use such small bolts that it seems they are very easy victims to rust and breakage. You would think that they would figure out a way to secure those things a little better. Most likely the bolt head just snapped off and the threaded part of the bolt is still lodged in there. You may have to drill it out and re-tap the threads or it might be easier to just drill a new hole and install a new bolt. I even knew of one person that used double-sided tape to secure the shield back in place but I wouldn't recommend that as a permenent solution.