Flapping Noise Whilst Driving

[stable]

My Avensis has started to make a fast noisy flapping sound like something is scraping.The car is a 1.8 1998.It is worse going up hill and when accelerating.Has anyone any idea what this could be?Otherwise the car performs well.Went through a ford with water a couple of days ago.Hope that is not a factor. :o

[Tawse57]

I can't reconcile 'flapping' with 'scraping' - to me flapping is the sort of noise you get from something soft whereas scraping is something harder or metallic???

Also, where is the noise coming from - the front, the rear, underneath? A bit more info would be helpful.

I had a flapping noise once, which got worse on acceleration, and it was a plastic shopping bag that I had run over and had got wrapped around the axle of a front wheel. You could not see it from the outside by a simple look and I had to feel around and then unwind it as it had wound up almost into a ball - the bit left was causing the flapping and it sounded awful.

Hope this helps.