[qweegybo]

About ten miles left on my commute back home (stop and go traffic in LA) and I start to hear this weird noise only when I accelerate. Almost like a grinding sound. I throw her up on jacks (stands) and do a little investigating with my brother in law behind the wheel and me underneath (the car that is). I found that the Drive shaft is rubbing against the heat shield right in front of the Rear Diff.

The area on the heat shield its coming into contact with is right in the middle underneath the gas tank, and where the drive shaft come out of the Rear diff and starts to get bigger... all I had to do to fix this was use a large screw driver to reshape the heat shield away from the Drive shaft.

In looking for the problem a couple things came to mind,

First was: Why is it rubbing the heat shield, could it have gotten hot enough in the stop and go traffic that the heat shield started to sag? Could the gas tank be sagging causing the heat shield to sag? I tried to use my motorcycle jack to see if there was up-down movement in the gas tank (just in case it came loose or something) and it wasn't moving up any. Which leads me to believe that the gas tank is fine.

Second: I tried to move the drive shaft around and see if it was loose or had any lateral or horizontal movement, none. But it did move in and out of the Rear diff a little bit, about an inch, is that normal?

Third: would something cause the angle in the Drive shaft to change were it could rub the heat shield underneath the gas tank? maybe the front of the rear diff moving up, causing that end portion of the shaft to rub the heat shield?

Fourth: This car has the potential to be more maintenance intensive than any girl I've ever dated? but it soo worth it!

Well I tried searching for similar threads and found nothing on this. any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My car has +111K on it so I'm sure there will be new failures on the car that haven't come up yet.

Enlighten me friends...

Ef