fishy Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 (edited) Hey gang, Help me diagnose this one if you can, please.Here's a video of my 98 ej22 making a racket. I'm hoping for piston slap because I don't believe that to be fatal...Facts that I know:1. The noise gets quieter as the car warms up but never completely goes away.2. The colder the morning the louder the startup3. I have no knowledge of the car ever being overheated but I've only owned it for about 14,000kms (forgot to say: the car is currently at about 235,000kms)4. It does have oil in it. Edited February 27, 2013 by fishy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gbhrps Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 fishy, Its been many years and three newer OBW's since I had my 97 OBW LTD, that did the same thing as yours. At around 23 000 km it developed this same symptom under the exact same conditions. Owned the car until 2004 and 279 000 km later and never had an issue with the motor, or with the car for that matter. I can't say if yours sounds the same as the one I had (too many years ago) but my wife and I just lived with the issue until we traded cars. Any research I did at the time suggested that piston slap was an annoyance only, and had no effect on engine longevity. If your noise is piston slap, it shouldn't be a problem for you. There is no need to worry. Good Luck! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShawnW Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 Rod knock always gets worse as the engine runs for a longer period of time in my experience. I don't like piston slap and make great strides to eliminate it in all the engines I rebuild but I never pull one out of a car because it does it-always recommend to the customer that they live with it. I know of one customer with 50,000 miles of slapping and no other problems with the motor. I am amazed these don't at a minimum consume oil a little bit but the ones I have worked with didn't even do that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Dude Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 I owned a 1999 Forester and it had piston slap for the entire 200,000 miles that I owned it. The engine was noisy, especially when cold, but it never used a drop of oil. Overall, it was a great car and probably had at least another 100,000 miles of life left when I sold it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hakim Craddock Posted February 27, 2013 Share Posted February 27, 2013 i have read somewhere that rotella t shell diesel oil helps quiet down the piston slap... My 03 forester sounds similar (173k miles) but not quite as loud, and it comepletely goes away ounce it is fully warmed up. I dont know what oil is in there now because i just got the car and it has another 2k left b4 an oil change is needed.. But i think i am going to try a 10-40 synthetic oil in there unless someone in here advises against it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
djmark7 Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 same here '98 leg 2.2, goes away completely when warmed up 140k on motor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idosubaru Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 (edited) i think the timing tensioner is slapping around - pull the drivers side timing cover (3 10mm bolts i think). get a light and watch the thing flop around. you can run the engine without timing covers to see. it'll be notably bouncing all over the place. interference engine - so you need to replace it like yesterday. ebay kits are the way to go - all new tensioner, pulleys, and belts for reasonable prices. or it's piston slap, it's benign but just annoying, turn the radio up and ignore it. doesn't seem like rod knock - like Shawn says Subaru rod knock seems to get progressively worse. if you're driven 14,000km without it changing that doesn't seem like rod knock to me. and rod knock doesn't diminish as it warms up....and that motor is not prone to rod knock like the EJ25 of the same era....lots of things in your favor here. Edited February 28, 2013 by grossgary Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaz345 Posted February 28, 2013 Share Posted February 28, 2013 The way you describe it, worse when the engine is cold, sounds like piston slap but I'm not an experienced expert on the matter. Everything I've heard though suggests that if it were rod knock, your engine would have blowed up by now. They don't tend to last thousands of miles with knocking rod. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uniberp Posted March 1, 2013 Share Posted March 1, 2013 Hey gang, Help me diagnose this one if you can, please. Here's a video of my 98 ej22 making a racket. I'm hoping for piston slap because I don't believe that to be fatal... Facts that I know: 1. The noise gets quieter as the car warms up but never completely goes away. 2. The colder the morning the louder the startup 3. I have no knowledge of the car ever being overheated but I've only owned it for about 14,000kms (forgot to say: the car is currently at about 235,000kms) 4. It does have oil in it. If it is a recent and rapid development it is rod knock. "Be prepared" is my advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WoodsWagon Posted March 2, 2013 Share Posted March 2, 2013 The rev and release you did at 1:45 in the video would have resulted in a nasty back-rattle noise if the rod bearings were gone. It does sound a lot like piston slap but that doesn't start suddenly. As Grossgary mentioned, the timing belt tensioner is a known culprit of bad noises. If you take the drivers side cover off you can peer in with it running and see if the tensioner is flapping about or holding steady. The other possibility is a cracked flexplate if it has an automatic transmission. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishy Posted March 2, 2013 Author Share Posted March 2, 2013 Thanks for the input, guys.When I think harder about it I guess the noise hasn't exactly started suddenly. This car sat in my garage being worked on over last winter and when I finally fired it up in the spring to get it on the road it was knocky then too. I think a combination of exhaust leak and warm weather kept the knock from being noticable for a while. This fall I got the exhaust patched up and then the temperatures started to drop. We've had a pretty cold winter here so maybe it IS just a really horny case of piston slap. Here's hoping.I broke off one of the 10mm inspection cover bolts the other day trying to get in there for a peek. I'll have to try the other two when I get a chance again. If I break them all off at least I'll be able to take the cover off! I could always goop the cover back on with a few blobs of RTV or something I suppose.I'm curious what a cracked flexplate does to the operation and longevity of the engine/car. Does anyone have experience with those? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fairtax4me Posted March 2, 2013 Share Posted March 2, 2013 (edited) A cracked flex plate usually makes a metallic rattly banging noise. It's going to be most prevalent when the engine is put under load at low RPM, such as when shifting into drive or reverse. A circumferential crack (shown above) can make a hell of a racket and leave you dead in the water if the flex plate separates entirely. If the center section breaks out the engine power doesn't get transferred to the transmission, and you go nowhere. Also once that happens, after the engine is stopped it will not restart because the flex plate is used to turn the crankshaft for starting. The starter will engage and the flex plate will spin, but the engine will sit still or may jump randomly. Radial cracks (from the center out) can be fine for quite a long time, and may not even make noise in some cases. Typically they cause no internal damage to the engine or transmission, but anything is possible with the right combination of failure and luck. (Or bad luck) Edited March 2, 2013 by Fairtax4me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idosubaru Posted March 2, 2013 Share Posted March 2, 2013 I broke off one of the 10mm inspection cover bolts the other day trying to get in there for a peek. I'll have to try the other two when I get a chance again. If I break them all off at least I'll be able to take the cover off! I could always goop the cover back on with a few blobs of RTV or something I suppose. I'm curious what a cracked flexplate does to the operation and longevity of the engine/car. Does anyone have experience with those? use zipties to hold the cover on, easily removed the next time. or leave it off or concoct something, not a big deal. if the tensioner fails then you'll end up with bent valves, so i'd check that first. 2 bolts stand between you and avoiding a huge engine repair. if it's not that and it's piston slap then you can ignore it the rest of your life. i wouldn't worry about a flexplate, that's probably the least likely cause. well covered by fairtax...hopefully he didn't learn that all by experience!!!...it's just a plate between the engine and trans so it's benign in terms of "longevity of the engine car", it'll just leave you stranded eventually. I've never heard of any damage from one, but like he said with bad luck, i wouldn't necessarily want to see a worst case scenario. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted March 2, 2013 Share Posted March 2, 2013 totaly piston slap its fine have had lots thiss bad i fix thiss all the time i whould remove #2 #4 pistons and knurll them and reinstall and noise will be gone the late model 2.2 were bad for thiss as the pistons are very short and the oil ring supply holes get pluged and wears the top side of piston badly. I fix thiss alot when i do 2.5 headgaskets surface the heads and knurll #2#4 some engines sound realy bad. If it was a rod it whould be shaking and not smooth when reved and it whould get louder when warm have you put a oil preshure gauge on it ? no less than 10 psi hot at idle i'.m shure its fine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishy Posted March 7, 2013 Author Share Posted March 7, 2013 Hey guys, minor update:The slap/knock continues... I checked the timing belt tensioner and could NOT see it jumping around anywhere. I also changed the oil (due anyway) and put in some Castrol(I think it was) "High Mileage Engines" type stuff that I saw on sale. That seems to have made zero improvement(as expected). I couldn't see any silver/gold flake in the old oil so I take that as a sign that there wasn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted March 8, 2013 Share Posted March 8, 2013 Have had many with bad piston slap lately is fairly commen on the 98and up engines the only problem it seems to cause is theknock senser backs off the timing. Nothing will fix it without tearing the piston out and ether replace it or knurll it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torxxx Posted March 8, 2013 Share Posted March 8, 2013 +1 for piston slap I'm wondering if you got whats technically a 99 2.2L block? 98 on back were not prone to piston slap. Yours sounds just like my mom's 01 Legacy, and shes driven it for 40k+ miles with that same noise. Dealer verified it was piston slap and said drive it. Its a subaru engine anyways, they were meant to be driven til a rod plays peekaboo out the top center of the block Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uniberp Posted March 8, 2013 Share Posted March 8, 2013 +1 for piston slap I'm wondering if you got whats technically a 99 2.2L block? 98 on back were not prone to piston slap. Yours sounds just like my mom's 01 Legacy, and shes driven it for 40k+ miles with that same noise. Dealer verified it was piston slap and said drive it. Its a subaru engine anyways, they were meant to be driven til a rod plays peekaboo out the top center of the block But then you lose the core value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prwa101 Posted March 9, 2013 Share Posted March 9, 2013 Just a though, I had a similar problem on my forester, it started all of a sudden. Felt like something broke and ran really bad. Pulled the timming covers off, tired out the timming sprocket bearing went out, bent the bolt and all 20 degrees. Start with the simplest work you way up. Good luck! -Prwa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikec03 Posted March 9, 2013 Share Posted March 9, 2013 Sounds like the piston slap on my 97 2.2 legacy. I've put 30K on it since it started. +1 to the jipties. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted March 9, 2013 Share Posted March 9, 2013 if you look at the top of block in the middle front it has four letters aa-bb this indacates the bore on the cly the b bore has more piston slap problems than the a bore check if its b bore on #2#4 if so that whould be the slap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishy Posted March 15, 2013 Author Share Posted March 15, 2013 if you look at the top of block in the middle front it has four letters aa-bb this indacates the bore on the cly the b bore has more piston slap problems than the a bore check if its b bore on #2#4 if so that whould be the slap I'm not sure where those numbers are. Do I need to have anything removed to find them? Car is still slapping and rattling along down the road. I estimate at least several thousand kilometers since the noise has gotten on my nerves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted March 15, 2013 Share Posted March 15, 2013 top center behind the alt on the flat part of block Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaz345 Posted March 15, 2013 Share Posted March 15, 2013 I'm not sure where those numbers are. Do I need to have anything removed to find them? Car is still slapping and rattling along down the road. I estimate at least several thousand kilometers since the noise has gotten on my nerves. The noise, if it's piston slap, is definitely completely harmelss. My mechanic's shop loaner does it to the point that at idle it sounds like a Volkswagen diesel. Get's some very strage looks from other Subie people at stoplights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivans imports Posted March 16, 2013 Share Posted March 16, 2013 i could knurll a piston and send it to you need to know the bore is it a-b but it will last like that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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