rattling noise at idle

Desync

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Protege5
I have just noticed recently that when I'm at a stoplight sometimes I hear a rattling noise and it happened when the car is in neutral or if I'm moving the shifter left or right. Its a short rattling noise and comes and goes. Anybody had this problem before? I have a twm short shifter with twm hardware and bushings. I HOPE its just a bolt and nothing major. This used to happen on my dads 80's M3 all the time :/

And I'm pretty sure the noise is coming from around where the shifter is.
 
I have the same thing. The bottom of the shifter is touching the heat shield above the resonator. Listen when you put it in 3rd you'll hear like a cling. And if you bring the rpms up (in 3rd) then get off the gas it'll buzz >_< it's horrible I have the same problem. I'm thinking about wrapping my exhaust pipe in exhaust wrap then removing the heat shields because there's a rubber piece at the end of the shifter so I don't want to risk that melting by just taking the shield off. Also do you have after market exhaust hangers?
 
No I don't have an aftermarket exhaust hanger. Ugh it annoys me cause it always makes the noise at stoplights. It sounds like a bolt or something metal is rattling. how can I find out if my shifter is touching the resonator? I have yet to look underneath my car.
 
It's not touching the resonator itself, it's touching the heat shield. I still have no idea how to fix it :/
 
Removing the heat shield is the easiest solution. I removed mine like 4yrs ago and have had no ill effects. If your afraid of removing it, just get some bolt spacers from home depot and put them between the car and heat shield. This would lower the shield just a bit to give it better clearance from the shifter
 
The twm kit comes with spacers. There's almost no space between the resonator and the bottom of the shifter after you put the spacers in though. I might just remove my heat shield if you didn't have and bad effects.
 
I think I'll drop the heatshield a couple of mm with some more washers before I think about taking it off. So there's very little space between the heatshield and the bottom of the shifter? Almost touching?! even with the spacers twm provides?
 
There shouldn't be any space issues if you used the spacers that came with the twm shifter. Are you able to replicate the noise idling at home? You may want to lie next to the car while idling and maybe have someone rev it a little bit. Maybe you can find the source of the noise
 
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