catalytic converter head shield

[SSSW]

A bolt has rusted off the heat shield of my 2001 CR-V. The guys at Goodyear say I have to replace the entire catalytic converter. I find that hard to believe. I've been trying to find something on converters on the internet, without much luck. Anyone else have experience with the heat shield?

[BullShifter]

That's BS. Heatshields always come loose. You have 3 options: Secure heatshield with large hose clamp, Remove heatshield, or Replace heatshield. We always clamp or remove them, there is no need to replace it when it's clamped properly.

[superbluecivicsi]

who even needs a heatshield?

[BullShifter]

Originally Posted by superbluecivicsi

who even needs a heatshield?

That's what I say. The ones on the car I can understand but the others on exhaust systems are a joke, Honda & Nissan seem to be the worst with shields. The way I look at it, a $1200 for my old car didn't have heatshields, Borla's dont, Flowmaster's don't, none of the top exhaust companies use them & that's all they do, build exhaust.

[psautofor]

The heat shield on my 2004 Element rusted out at the front bolts after "only" 5 years of driving on Chicago's salted winter roads.

Since the part is obviously designed to be easily replaced (4 captive nuts on the shield, 4 drop in bolts through the converter bracket, I was surprised when it wasn't available from a local parts house that carries a lot of Honda/Acura parts. They wanted to sell me an entire aftermaket converter for a couple hundrd bucks.

After some digging I found majestichonda.com shows it as an assembly including the bolts for $20 including s/h. I'll phone my local dealers tromorrow to see if they have it & for how much. Majestic has exploded diagrams of most of the vehicle and gives Honda's part numbers for each. I didn't look at the CR-V parts, but given that 10x as many are sold as Elements, they probably have a similar breakdown.

Moral of the story is that you can complain about parts failing that by their nature will wear our, and take the weasy way out of calling the cheap-cheap muffler or brake shops, or go to a dealer and sometimes get Honda OEM parts for a lot less.