Couple weeks ago my 01 sedan developed a noise that sounded like the death rattle of an entire universe. After some poking and prodding with an improvised stethoscope (a length of 1/2 EMT

) I figured it was most likely the catalytic converter. A short perusal of teh intarwebz provided plenty of examples of other Accords with the same malady; several youtubers had videos up that sounded just like mine

. Quick trip to Amazon, and two days later a new catalytic converter is on the front step. Just finished the install.
Surprisingly, the 18 year old nuts broke loose relatively easy, once I extended the breaker bar to get enough torque into the situation:
Naturally, though one of the nuts just WOULD not let go of the stud: penetrating oil (dose after dose over a couple hours) did nothing, socket rounded it off, vise-grips made it worse, it even broke my nut splitter!
So the Sawzall was brought into play, though the geometry of the situation meant only the first inch of the blade could actually be brought to bear. So, every couple minutes I had to crawl out from under the car, clamp the blade in a vise, and whack it with a hammer to snap off the end and expose new teeth

).
After about an hour of this routine the stud was cut through enough to snap it off with a pair of pliers. A couple whacks with a sledge hammer and cold chisel broke loose the little bit of nut remaining.
Took a bit of wiggling and loosening up one of the exhaust hangers to get enough play, but finally the old converter popped out.
Moved the O2 sensor over to the new gizmo and rounded up the gaskets and nuts and bolts and such.
The new converter went on in about 15 minutes. Whee.
Blessed silence! And blessed reduced backpressure and no more weird little hesitations around 2000 RPM. WIN!
