Are you talking about piston slap during the first few minutes of warm-up..??


If so...that is what it is. Nothing to fear or nothing really wrong...just the piston noise until the piston warms up to fill the clearance to the bore.

Pistons rock as they cross TDC where the thrust load from the rod angularity shifts from one side to the other. This makes noise. Harmless, but it is the source of piston slap in most all situations.

To prevent this, pistons are designed with long, tapered, flexible skirts so that they can be fitted very tight in the bores when the bore and piston is cold. The taper of the skirt and flexibility of the skirt then prevents scuffing when the piston is hot. Also, the piston pin in OEM production pistons is always offset to one side....it is NOT in the middle of the piston. By offsetting the pin in the piston, artificial thrust load is created to control the piston "rocking" as it crosses over TDC.

Unfortunately, all of the above control techniques, common in past model engines to the extreme, create excess piston mass, cause friction and cost power and fuel economy. With the desire to build in as much power and free-revving capability and to improve fuel economy as much as possible thru friction reduction these design features are pushed in the other direction on modern engines.

Piston pin offset has been reduced over the years to a bare minimum today to reduce the thrust load generated and reduce friction. Pistons have been lightened up considerably by shortening the skirts. This creates less rotating/reciprocating mass which is good for power, free revving capability and fuel economy. Light weight pistons are great but the skirts, by necessity, are short making it hard to make them both strong and flexible and the shorter skirts make them more prone to rocking.

Unfortunately, when the performance and fuel economy oriented pistons are run cold they are very prone to "slap" until they warm up to operating temperature.

The piston designers and development engineers are always treading the fine line between piston slap cold and friction and power/fuel economy loss when the engine is warm.

It is possible that you are hearing piston noise from an engine that is on the "high limit" for piston clearance so that it makes some noise cold. The good news is that the condition is harmless and that engine is probably a little more powerful (due to less friction) than a "quiet" counterpart. The bad news is that...it makes noise cold.

As an example of what the piston pin offset can do, it was common back in the early 70's to turn the pistons around "backwards" in the large displacement Chrysler engines to gain power. Those engines had large piston pin offsets to create thrust load to control the piston slap. So much thrust load and friction was created that just turning the pistons around in the bores was often good for 10 HP. The engines were very quiet with the pistons in correctly and they slapped like crazy, especially when cold, with the pistons reversed so as to reverse the pin offset.

Racing engines do not have the pin offset and thus the pistons slap like mad...but no one hears them over the open headers.

The noise is an annoyance but will not hurt anything and the engine is fine.