what is piston slap, what damage does it do, is it common, if it has been repaired under warranty would you expect it to happen again? cheers guys

 

do a search for piston slap on here, there will be loads of threads about it.

AFAIK it only occurs on MY97/98 cars, mine has it, doesnt bother me. I didnt even notice it until i read a thread on here, and by then my warranty had run out. AFAIK it doesnt cause any problems, to cut a long story short its basically one of the pistons being a fraction too small for the cylinder, hence the slapping noise when cold, when the engine warms the piston expands and the slapping stops.

after having read countless threads on piston slap, i'm quite happy to leave mine as it is.

Hope this helps, i'm sure you will get a bigger more in depth answer from someone else

chris

 

Yup, in a nutshell what Chris said.

But I'm a MY97 owner who had to experience it
Its quite easy to confuse it with tappet noise, apart from piston slap only occurs when cold and under load or light accelaration from idle.

New short engine for me courtesy of Subaru (original engine had only done 30K ).

It does'nt mean that your engine will go ka-bloom when you next use it. Just that it won't last as long as it should, as there is increased bore wear on no.4

 

There's a sound file which has the noises produced at start up by an affected engine. As Chris_D says, do a search, it must crop up loads.

(MY98 owner who got a short block engine at 34K and 2year 10months )

 

double post

[Edited by CHRIS_D - 4/11/2003 11:18:10 AM]