I'll start with a bleat here: our '93 Camry went 105K miles before we sold
it and the exhaust had never been touched and did not leak - the original
heat sheilds were intact and did not rattle. It kinda annoys me that the
Honda catalytic converter heatshields start to disintegrate around the
fasteners at ~45K miles

Though it is clearly shown in the service manual I got a surprise recently
when I went to take of a rattling top heatshield on my '99 Integra. The
secondary O2 sensor goes through a hole in the heatshield and I ended up
cutting the heatshield with a Dremel cutting disk to get it off. What a
PITA.

Now I'm wondering how to go about putting a new top heatshield in - there
seem to be two options: 1) remove the O2 sensor, install heatshield and
reinstall O2 sensor; 2) wait till the B-pipe needs replaced so the cat can
be dropped far enough to get the clearance to install the new heatshield
over the sensor, which also involves pulling the wire from inside the car
of course... which I've found is relatively easy.

Given that O2 sensor removal poses certain potential difficulties/pitfalls,
I'm wondering what others have done here. Either way, it seems like quite
a rigmarole compared with older models... which could be avoided if Honda
would make heatshields with just a bit more corrosion resistance.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??