sundance-communications.com Forums Member Forums Phone Booth Noisy and normal

my winter beater passed away last week as you all know, 300 000kms (thats canadian) anyways, i replaced it with a similar car so i could re use my snow tires etc

Its a 2003 old lady go to church chevy cavalier 4 door bare bones. Ive been spending the last couple of nights pulling parts out of the sunfire to give the cavalier keyless entry, power door locks (in front) and remote electric mirrors.

now we had a couple of cold mornings this week, i thought for sure this car had a sticking rocker, until i discovered its twin cam lol, turns out its piston slap, i have a friend who works at a gm dealer, this is normal in the ecotec. He was saying they are noisy engines and they get lots of people thinking somthing is wrong!

on the other hand im impressed by the fuel economy, uses a bit more than half what my grand prix uses and 5/8 what the sunfire used!

I thought you had bought a hearse at one time.

My work trucks never get that much mileage before I need to change. My last one has about 225,000 km, runs great, but the body needs work. Need a truck?

"Noisy and normal"....sounds like most women I know

the boss has the hearse!

but yeah my cavalier, the heartbeat of america, a mexican built chevrolet. At least my sunfire was a lordstown built!

i have sitting at my moms house a cutlass that came from ste-therese assembly, i should junk it but its my only quebec built GM!

Piston-slap!?!?!? NORMAL!!?!?!? :shrug: Maybe I just spent too much time tinkering with V8’s and race engines but to me hearing piston-slap means the piston wants out in a bad way and is just about to make it’s own exit!


First thing that came to my mind too Dave. LOL… After saying stuff like that, I wonder why I’m still single. :rolleyes:

all i ever knew about piston slap tells me the same thing, but i checked 2 GM dealers and my neighbor who is a gm guy who says Ecottecs are just plain noisy lol

The hemi in my wife's grand cherokee is the same. Noisy at idle. I have found that it is due to the MDS on it. It uses 5w-20 so pretty thin oil and then when 4 cylinders shut down it sounds like the tappets are rattling away. But from what I can gather the hemis are just noisy. She still drives her grand prix for mileage (I can't believe a car that big gets over 30 on the hiway with my heavy foot) and the jeep for fun.

my grand prix gets better mileage than my sunfire, that 3.8 was an amazing engine. a bitch to tune but still my fave. My grand prix is a 97 and i store her in the winter to prolong her life, odd my winter beater has AC my summer car doesnt lol, the grand prix compressor seized up last year and it was cheaper to run a bypass pulley

The wife's is a 02 and in great shape really, nothing wrong with the body, the engine runs strong. I've just put a few small parts into it. I think low coolant sensor, which sucked, it's halfway down the radiator requiring battery removal. A fuel pressure switch I don't remember the exact one, it's on the fuel rail and very easy to get to and replace (car was stalhing) and just yesterday, replaced ignition switch. I took the old one apart and cleaned the contacts, the heat/ac fan would only work on 5 and sometimes the lights would go out. Carbon build up on the contacts in the switch. Ended up with a new one since I never could get the spring that returns the key to the run position back in place. I'm glad she has the gt and not the gtp. I would hate to think of something going wrong with the supercharger on those. But for the most part I think I have put maybe $200 into it with those parts in the last 4 years. It's too good to get rid of when you don't owe anything on it.