Hey everybody. New to the message board.

I just bought an '04 TL. Found the part pictured below hanging by a thread under the car. Can you identify it? How important is it?




I assume it is a heat shield/cover for the catalytic converter. All but one of the brackets have rusted out.

Do I need to get it replaced?

Here is a picture from underneath the car.



I'm not sure what the part upstream from the CC is, but is it a big deal that the wire mesh is being pulled back?

Thanks for reading.

 

Welcome to the forums.

As your guessed, that is a heat shield for your third catalytic converter. Do you need one? Probably... its not like your car will die from not having one, but the cats get super hot, so the heat shield protects everything else from the heat pretty well. It also protects the cats from road debris, etc.

The wire mesh being pulled back is your flex pipe portion of the j-pipe. I may be mistaken, but your exhaust might sound like it is leaking from that area due to the mesh being ripped back. Looks like you or the previous owner hit something that did all that damage.

As for the flexpipe, you can always get an aftermarket j-pipe for more power to replace the broken one.

 

I've only had the car for a month, so I don't have any reference to how it should sound. I'll take it to an exhaust place when I get a chance.

 

You'd hear a slight hiss, almost, from that spot. Basically, all your exhaust noise should come from the back of the car and not from any part of the pipe before the mufflers.