1997 Lumina Lifter Rattling

[Gary Allan]

Redline fuel injector cleaner (I forget the specific name) would work on the combustion chamber deposits. Again, this may not be the origin of your problem, but it's good preventive maintenance anyway. You'll know within a tank or two of fuel ..so it's not a protracted process in determining if it worked.

 

[tomcat27]

It doesn't matter if your gas tank is full, since you will be adding it to the oil - in an attempt to clean up and unstick the lifter. lifter noise is more of a tick and occurs with half the frequency of piston slap, which sounds more like a diesel engine rattle and is lower in the motor. theoretically you can use a wooden stick as an "earpiece" and hold it against the valve cover to listen to noise. be extremely careful, as there are moving parts that can catch the stick. I had piston slap in a Chevy 2.0. piston slap is caused by a piston that is a little loose in the cylinder, so it rattles until it heats up and expands. there really is no harm with ignoring piston slap - you could easily see 50k+ more miles out of it without problems.

 

[crazyoildude]

Hello,
I hear them all day in my engine shop and if it goes away when it warms up leave it alone most of them make that noise and it will keep on making it for years to come use 5w30 and a good filter and everything (if it is a mild piston slap) will be ok how is your oil pressure??

 

[lumina1997]

Oil pressure is normal. Just replaced the thermostat. If that means anything.....

 

[lumina1997]

normal oil pressure and temp. just horrible knocking noise that goes away after 5 or 10 min.

Kelly

 

[lumina1997]

oil pressure good...just sounds bad..knocking...

 

[simple_gifts]

Has the car seen regular oil changes since new? If so, I find it hard to believe it would be a lifter issue. As mentioned these engines are known to have piston slap for which there is no reasonable fix.

Ticking, I would pick lifters. Knocking, piston slap. IMHO.

Since there is no additional information that will allow us to determine one issue over the other, best to "try what you can that's cheap" by using MMO in the oil.

-Thomas.

 

[Robenstein]

Sometimes you can have both lifter noise and piston slap. In order to fix piston slap you need new pistons.....not cheap to fix an annoying but mostly harmless noise.

I put a pint of MMO in some 3100/3400 GM motors and it has helped a bit.

In some cars, a thicker oil can help to dampen the noise a bit. A 10w30 diesel oil helped a couple of them, plus they are better at cleaning than normal passenger car oils. Rotella T5 10w30 is a good one that is available at wal mart in gallon jugs. You could try that along with a pint or quart of marvels mystery oil or even Rislone to help clean out any gunk in the motor.

 

[aquariuscsm]

In case I missed it,what oil and filter are you using?

 

[addyguy]

Don't worry about piston slap. I've got a 2002 Cavalier w/a 2.2 OHV I-4, and it's had noticeable piston slap from when I got it at 55k miles.

At 140k+ miles, it STILL has piston slap, but starts right up, uses little oil, and is just noisy without consequence.

 

[Chris142]

Pioston slap is usually a hollow sound. A lifter can be a slight tick to a tack tack tack depending on the serverity.