Metal Vibrating Under Dad's Starlet.

[BALIKBAYAN]

Hi everyone,

My Dad said that he had some wierd noise from his Starlet yesterday and I looked at it today. I found out that it is this part 18435-11020 Protector Monolithic converter (according to www.toyodiy.com). The 2 rear corners of this metal shield should be attached to the exhaust pipe, but was not due to some rust. Now over to my question. What is this protector doing? In my point of view it is only a heat shield facing down to the ground. There is a proper heatshield between the exhaustpipe and the chassi. It would work fine without this protector, would it not?

I have another question too. I always put my jack under the flat part under the gearbox, but the car doesn´t lift up ok. It lifts much higher on the left side than the right side. There is no front center lifting point as far as I can see on that car. Have you the same problem with your Starlets? By the way, it is a standard Starlet with the 4E-FE engine from 1996 or 1997 he has.