I had a F150 with the 4.2L V6. Sounded like someone was hitting it with a hammer on cold mornings. Started somewhere around 20K miles. When I traded it in on my GMC it had 130K miles and still running strong.
On both trucks and on a 98 Beetle, I've found that a maintenance dose of AutoRX helps quiet the slap down to barely noticable. However if a dose is skipped, the noise slowy returns.
My thoughs on this are that pistons slap is aggravated by the shallow pistons on modern engines, but primarily caused by carbon build up in the ring packs. I've read similar theories here, and from my experiences believe it to be true, but haven't done research to support it.
Could be why Redline has helped in some cases.