Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. insubstantial, untrustworthy.

1850		London Standard 13 Sept. 2/6: I a, highly obliged for your insertion of my letter [...] exposing the rattle-trap balderdash of the Daily News.
1873		Sl. Dict. 267: Anything shaky and mean, but pretentious and vulgar, is said to belong to the rattletrap order of things.
1882		E. Nye Forty Liars (1888) 184: Perhaps you’d like to trade your old rattle-trap semi-annual for a library of 50,000 volumes.
1890		‘’Arry on Equality’ in Punch 22 Feb. 85/2: Despite Mounseer Rooso’s palaver or rattletrap rubbish like Bob’s.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 65: Rattle-trap, [...] anything showy and common, but low and mean, is said to belong to the rattle-trap order of things.

2. (US) run-down, seedy, unreliable.

1842		Taunton Courier 12 Oct. 6/2: They were beaten off by 450 men and three old rattle-trap guns.
1845		Oxford Chron. 11 Jan. 4/2: The great costly ‘rattle-trap’ convict prison at Reading.
1871		London Standard 29 Sept. 7/3: What is really wanted is, that a proper building should be erected instead of the rattletrap old place.
1883		Butler Wkly Times (MO) 13 June 8/3: We have visited [...] our jail. [...] It is an old rattletrap not fit to keep .
1893		Rock Is. Dly Argus (IL) 20 Mar. 7/2: A syndicate has been formed to purchase business sites occupied by rattletrap busines blocks.
1902		Oasis (Arixola, AZ) 6 Dec. 6/1: Eight years ago the plant consisted of a rattletrap hand press.
1922		N-Y Tribune 22 Jan. 9/3: My big brother operated a rattletrap merry-go-round at country fairs.
1923–4		F. Anthony ‘Helping Out Gus’ in Me And Gus (1977) 14: I was still gazing into the black night, listening to that rattletrap old engine.
1933		C.G. Booth ‘Stag Party’ in Penzler Pulp Fiction (2006) 93: He knew the Gaiety for the rattletrap barn it was.
1945		W. Maxwell Folded Leaf (1999) 135: Lymie and Spud saw him [...] riding off in a rattletrap open car without fenders or top.
1947–53		W. Guthrie Seeds of Man (1995) 202: I can drive this hoggle-jawed rattletrap truck this here next eighteen miles blindfolded.
1965		L. Haylen Big Red 60: Liz did drive fast in that old rattletrap sulky of hers.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 348: He felt like a rattletrap car with the boxes flapping and bouncing.
1995		J. Stahl Permanent Midnight 269: I’d gotten the nerve to [...] lug my rattletrap carcass inside.

3. of a vehicle, broken-down .

1847		Bell’s New Wkly Messenger 12 Dec. 1/3: We think we hear the rumblings of the coming revolution, the rattletrap jaunting-car bringing an insurrection to set down at the Castle doors.
1891		Glasgow Herald 4 Sept. 9/4: ‘An Engineer’ [...] proposes to put an end to it by enacting no more ratletrap or scrap-iron engines shall be erected.
1902		Commoner (Lincoln, NE) 18 Apr. 6/2: A judge came riding in a rattletrap chaise, / And rubbered aroud in various ways.
1915		Dover Exp. 5 Mar. 5/6: They say that our rattle-trap trams are pitchers that have ‘gone often to the well,’ and are certainly not duplicated against breakdown.
1922		Bridgeport Times (CT) 13 May 11/5: A man in a little old rattletrap flivver drove up behind me.
2020		B. Dempski et al. Dalko 48: Players traveled in rattletrap cars, stayed in cheap hotels, and made do with meager meal money.