I recently purchased a 99 civic ex with a stock motor. The car has just over 143k on it and it runs great and does not burn any oil. Since the temp has dropped the car makes a tapping noise on cold starts but once its warmed up it goes away entirely. The car only makes this noise when there is no load on the engine. If you push the gas a little the sound disappears. Like I said after about 5 minutes it goes away. I would think if it was a valve lash problem it would do it all the time. Im betting its piston slap but I wanted to see what you all thought.

 

Sounds as if you're having lifter issues or you need to adjust the valves.

 

Sounds like piston slap to me, but I would still reccomend adjusting the valves. Unless you have infomation of what has been done, you have no idea when it was done last, or if it ever has been done.

 

yep it's piston slap... mine does it in colder months as well and it goes away when the car gets up to temp.

nothing to worry about pretty much all honda's do it and is what the dealer told me and they even didn't try to persuade me into letting them adjust my valves.

they could've just said oh you need to bring it in and have those valves adjusted but they didn't.

 

thanks guys. I guess it wouldn't hurt to have the valves adjusted. I bought this car as a daily and am trying to do as little as possible to it. I feel its piston slap to because once its warm the valve train is very quiet. It never did it during the warmer months, ive had the car since September.