Interesting. But the weld shop I go to never would ask me about a part or refuse one either. They charged me $10 to fix a broken pipe on a caprice one time. I have never spent more than $100 there and that was for them to install a header back system on a old mustang. I supplied the muffler and I got everything else (a pre catalyst 67 Mustang) for $100. They are good guys and do alot of business, if you are in South Louisiana send me a PM and I will refer you. I remember when rice burners where huge and I had a four-wheel-steer Prelude, I paid a shop $350 to put on a stupid muffler (Iwas 18 and thought-loud=power) anyway they just took a muffler off the shelf and drove my car around the corner. Well the next time I went to get something done I went to that shop around the corner. Best find ever.

 

I just can't beleive he said $900 for the OEM cat.

You can go out and buy a whole brand new exhaust system including headers for $900 that's insane.

 

IF it's just the heat shield rattling and the cat's in decent shape, here's my 5 minute, $1 solution:

Big hose clamp, wrap it around, cinch it up nice and tight, problem solved! No more rattling. Been there, done that before, it works.

My $0.02 worth.

 

Must be the same shop 20DodgeNeon00 goes to.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/MAGNA...3286.m20.l1116

done and done.

everything is cheaper on ebay.

they buy in bulk, and you pay less

 

I think by the way the conversation went, he didn't want me to show up expecting him to weld a magnaflow cat on.

 

I don't even understand why he'd care? It's an opportunity to charge someone 20 bucks for 10 minutes worth of welding.

That's like $160 an hour...

 

I am calling around still... seems like everyone has a different solution out here. I do like the one shop that would gut the cat for me, then weld on a single in, single out universal cat. Then I could get a SI/SO magnaflow have them take it from there.
they were going to charge me $199 for the universal.

 

If you can't trust the magnaflow how can you trust a Universal Cat?

 

Universal doesn't mean its a no-name cat. Just that its a universal setup. That it can work on many other cars.

Magnaflow makes a universal cat.