Piston-Slap

[Big-Kev]

Hi folks, my wife's 2008 Aygo has only covered 29,000 careful and fully serviced miles, yet it has piston-slap when cold. This has been getting worse gradually over the months although the noise disappears when the engine has fully warmed up. In all other respects the engine performs well and oil consumption is negligable.

Do we need to be concerned?

What mileage are these tiny engines capable of?

Kind regards, BK.

[daveyjp]

I wouldn't be too concerned. It's cold at the moment and the oil needs time to get through the system - ours has noisy tappets on start up, but it soon disappears.

No reason these engines can't do well in excess of 100,000 (the engine has been around for years in various cars) as long as they are serviced regularly with the correct specification of oil.

[Big-Kev]

Many thanks for your reply daveyjp, much appreciated.

[C_U_Jimi]

Hi Kev,

Toyota re-built my engine under warranty because of piston slap. It started at less than 20,000 miles. I ignored it at first but it got so bad that I had to have it done. My local Toyota dealer agreed immediately that it was un-acceptable and dealt with it without a quibble.

The car has now done 56,000 miles and on a really cold morning I can hear it starting again!

Needless to say, I'm not impressed with these engines. My previous Toyota was a Yaris that did in excess of 100,000 miles without needing any work done and wasn't even burning oil. But the Yaris had a Toyota engine, not a re-badged Dhaihatsu.

[Pogle]

And another one. Mine is an 09 with 29000 miles on and makes a noise until warm. Never considered piston slap but it sounds feasible. All is perfectly OK when it is warm and it uses no oil but it is starting to niggle me. I was hoping to keep this car for a long time but I presume this will only get worse so I might have to re-think. Bugger.

[adilmon]

It's more likely to be valve clearances that need checking. Piston slap doesn't often vanish when warm.

By the way, the cylinders cannot be re-bored

[welshviking]

Mine is a 57 reg with 24k on the clock and does not make any weird noises when it is started in the cold,

[Big-Kev]

It's more likely to be valve clearances that need checking. Piston slap doesn't often vanish when warm.

By the way, the cylinders cannot be re-bored

Thanks for your reply adilmon. I have to say that the noise we have when cold is definitely piston-slap, not valve clearances. I have had cars in the past that have had slap when cold but gradually quietened as the pistons warm up and expand. The valve gear on the Aygo has been quiet since the running in period (it did tap for about a second when starting from cold for the first 1000 miles or so but ok since then) Piston slap has a different sound, more of a hollow pinging sound which varies with engine load and can gradually disappear as normal engine temperature is reached.

I just wondered if it was normal for these engines after a few thousand miles and judging by a couple of the replies on here it does seem to be common.

Thanks for your interest folks, kind regards, B-K.

[JonRos]

Just been told my wifes 2012 Aygo with 46.000 miles has piston slap - £3000.00 to fix. Is it worth it? (Clutch needs fixing too £700). Most most annoyingly the noise started straight a after a full plus service service. Its been well looked after and just does my wifes home - school - work run

.

[phillev]

My previous car was a 2012 107 bought with 8k and a FSH and it had awful piston slap from cold. To be fair it disappeared when warm and  never used a drop of oil in over 8k, it's not unheard of on the 1KRFE and I would live with it.

[Mikes1992u]

I know this is an old thread but my 2012 has had this since it was at about 15,000 miles. I always thought it was just a quirk of the engine until I found out it was piston slap It's now at 99,000 miles and it hasn't really got any worse but at around 40,000 miles I changed my oil change interval from 10,000 miles down to 5,000 miles as there was allot of sludge forming in the bottom of the sump. Plus it gives me a wider more comfortable window to find the time to service my car as I did once have a really busy month when my oil change was due and ended up doing a 13,000 mile oil change. I do them myself so total cost of an oil change is around £35-50 depending on the deals I can find on oil.

The engine burns 500mls of oil every 5,000 miles. I did once switch from my usual 0w30 oil and tried 0w20 oil specified in the 2012 manual, the piston slap went away but oil consumption increased to about 1.6L every 5,000 miles. So I never used 0w20 oil again as the risk of running out of oil is worse then piston slap. With 0w30 it's back to about 500mls so no harm done in that sense. I know the newer models recommend 0w16 which was supposed to fix the oil consumption issue Toyota's have with 0w20 but I really don't fancy trying it when it isn't actually specified by Toyota for my 2012 model year.

[Gray86]

My wife’s Peugeot 107 (2009MY) we owned before her current Yaris had piston slap which started around 40,000 miles. I serviced it at 5,000 mile increments, although it burned a little oil in between. I changed from 5w30-5w40 oil which cut down some of the oil consumption. We sold it at 51000 miles for the Yaris. 
 

my wife has zero mechanical sympathy and accelerates briskly from cold. I don’t think her commute of 0.8 miles at the time helped longevity much.