Hey everyone, now ive heard so many explainations at work and from friends on this topic. but everyone at work owns a volkswagen so thats not to reasssuring. In any case my Type R has piston slap when its cold and i was told this is "normal", it goes away when its warmed up. should i bother replacing pistons or just let it go for now.

 

Are you having oil loss problems?
Is the motor stock?
Piston slap is usually associated with forged pistons ... depending on clearances.

 

What is piston slap and how can I tell if it's occurring?

 

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1. It depends on the severity. See if you can get a motor rebuilder to listen to what you're talking about.

2. The VW tolerance for piston slap goes back to the old air cooled days, when it was really quite cheap to replace the pistons and cylinders as a set. You wouldn't necessarily even have to work on the head when you did this.

It's a lot more expensive now, and you should not have as high a tolerance for the hearing of piston slap in your Honda. Certainly, if there's any sign of it after the car is warm you should consult somebody about the work before it gets bad. You can only overbore a B motor by so much before it's cheaper to buy a new block.

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I'd really, truly have an experienced person listen to your motor to make sure that it's gone when the motor's warmed up. Don't wait too long.

 

I don't know what type of pistons VW's use, but you wont have piston slap with cast pistons. This is assuming the pistons are installed with proper clearances in mind.

Forged pistons on the other hand, have different expansion/contraction properties, and piston slap is a common occurance. On cold start up, you can hear the piston slap on my motor, it is not as loud as others, as CP is known as a 'quiet' forged piston, but if you stood next to a car with JE pistons on startup, you would hear the piston slap.

Hopefully you're just hearing the valves ticking, which is common on B-series Hondas.

Worst case scenario is that you are hearing rod knock (which is different than piston slap). Put a breaker bar to the side of you block, and put your ear to the other end of the bar, if you can distinctly hear the echo of metal-metal contact, you might just have some crapped out rod bearings. In this case, take the car to a trustworthy mechanic and get a second opinion.

 

Yes i am having oil consumption issues so i just figured that the pistons were the problem hopefully they cause i cant hear to much of anything once its warmed up... except for the valves i know about them from my friends B16 and that only has 30k on it. thanks for the info