just got my budget y-pipe put on yesterday, and while driving home today, I started to hear a scraping/rattling sound, as if something was dragging on the street from my car. I was about two blocks from my house, so I waited until I got home, parked, got out, and took a look underneath the car.

sure enough, I saw a dangling piece of metal dragging the street underneath the car. I decided to pull it in the driveway to get a better look at it, but when I backed up to get out of the spot I parked in, the piece of metal fell off the car, and was left lying in the street.

I went and picked it up, and it was a half rusted (the inner part was totally rusted, the outer part still had some silver showing) piece of what seemed to be a shell that would go around piping, and a round clip looking piece with a screw through one end of it.

I don't know much about the structure of exhaust systems, so I have no idea what this thing is. my muffler is still intact, and my y-pipe is still intact, so I'd imagine this piece came from somewhere between those two things.

oh, I turned the car back on and rev'd the engine, and I now have a raspy sort of sound... almost sounds like someone snoring.

what the hell is going on here? my only guess is that the installation of the y-pipe (no, I didn't do it myself) may have knocked something loose that was already on it's last leg.

any help would be appreciated. thanks.

 

How big was this piece? Maybe a heatshield?

-Nick

 

about a foot long, and maybe three inches wide or so.

you know, now that I think about it, I'm kinda wondering if there's other pieces of it in the street blocks away from my house where it originally started dragging. I had my stereo up for a while so I'm not totally positive when it started.

would a cracked/missing heatshield cause that raspy sound in my exhaust that I have now?

 

maybe a leak