It appears most of you are Turbo owners so you may not be interested in the problems of a mere Sport owner!! Nevertheless I'll run it up the flag pole and see who salutes.

I bought a 98 Sport in August 1998 and after
approx 3500 miles I noticed an engine knock upon start up that lasted for about the first 5 minutes of cold running. My driving style is pretty steady - average 30+ mpg, run in for 1500 miles, never over rev when cold, etc - so I am sure I have not caused the problem. I took it to my dealer who called in the IM engineer who said his did it also !! He went on to say that a fax from Japan puts it down to short skirt pistons in the 98 engine. The problem got worse so called engineer again who said his had aswell !! He now said that IM had sent people over to Japan and Japan was sending people over here as the problem was happening to Legacys aswell now. They've now replaced my engine but I've lost confidence in Subaru a bit and my plan for a Turbo later this year is, shall we say, on hold. Any comments???

 

Take the plan off hold.

In fact move it forward. Buy an import more reason to smile and no undue waiting.

Mike.

 

Apparently this is a well known phenomenon, and is a common quirk of the engine but it's nothing to worry about -it's on the turbo as well. It's caused by the low friction short skirted piston.

 

There's a technical term for this that sounds like the result of a Friday night in Essex - 'piston slap'.

I suffered from this on my Alfasuds as well - also a Boxer engine - which due to gravity, may explain the small amount of oil burning off when starting from cold a the oil does not entirely sink back to the sump as it would in an upright engine.

Having said all of that I have not witnessed this problem with the 911.

Cheers,

David

 

Is this applicable to 97 MY Sport Engines
I have a tapping noise for the first few minutes when the engine in driven from cold but put it down to tappets
Are they hydraulic on this MY engine
My car has done 27000 miles and I think it has always had it when cold
Never had it on my previous Legacies

 

I beleive this noise is from 97my
on Impreza turbo as this is when they changed from hyd tappets to adj shims
possible reason !