Celica Forums General Discussion Engine and Performance Terrible noise after installing sway bar

After, attempting to attact an after market sway bar for my 7th gen Celica gts, we learned that it was necessary to replace the rear end links as well, thus we re attached the exhaust and retightend the loosened bolts, however, the heatshield has rusted through and fell off, but that is not the culprit of the terrible noise and feeling. Now the Celica has a grinding like sound coming from the rear, almosts as if the breaks were locked or the parking brake was engaged. Does anyone have any experince in this?

How are your brake pads? Was everything torqued to factory specs?

The brake pads have not been worn away to the point of grinding. The suspicion might be a loose exhaust.

Perhaps, but I don't know why that would cause a grinding noise, ya know?

I would just get under the car and shake everything.

Might I suggest a bad catalytic converter? You said you had to loosen the exhaust to replace the sway bar so you may have jostled something loose in the exhaust system such us in the CAT. I think mine did that but seemed to correct itself because I had that weird sound too for a few seconds. This is what's keeping me from changing the sway bar though eventually I need to change the bushings, which I hope you did when you changed the sway bar. Below are examples of videos of what a bad CAT sounds like:

Thanks for the input, but the sound is different from that, it sounds like a grinding when braking and accelerating, meanwhile it has a sound of flapping metal that is attached on one end of something, but keeps bouncing. The muffler was the only part that was loosened.

That is what I've been attempting to do. I hope it is a more simple fix.

The only other thing similar I experienced was in the front disc brake dust shields were rusty or bent so they are making contact with the rotor and/or wheel. I just ripped or cut them off the hub assembly because they were so badly rusted they just came off. At the rear, I have brake drums and it was the brake shoes being so worn it was grinding metal to metal (shoe to drum), so I replaced the brake shoes, which is a pain being drum brakes (unless you have rear disc brakes) with all the springs but I was able to do it. Since then, no weird grinding or scraping noise. The only other thing it could be are wheel bearings, then you may have to take that to the shop.