when i start up my car (cold) it knocks really badly... really bad sound, but after a while it goes away for the most part. could it be piston slap? or could it be my lifters ticking? it sounds like only one of four make a sound because if it were all four, it would have a higher frequency.

i also have 159k miles on my car if that helps any.

The stock lifters are shitty. Take the valve cover off and try wiggling the rocker arms that have closed valves. They should not be loose. All of mine were pretty loose, and some on cyl 1 were terribly loose. The thing about it is that, I don't think the noise went away too much after the enine got warm. Maybe a little. Mine caused ticking from the day I bought it, till the day I installed new PT lifters. The new PT lifters are great. If your rockers are loose - get some new PT lifters.

If you're using stock pistons then I wouldn't think that it is piston slap. The only time you'll hear noise from the stock pistons is if the cylinder is so worn out that it needs to be bored out to fix it. You may want to check you're compression to see how your engine is doing.


95 Eclipse RS : 5 speed
Jeep TB writeup - http://www.dimensia.com:81/jimbo/JeepTBfor2gnt.html