I have a 2003 Monte that has developed a pistol slap. The car has 65g miles and is bearly 4 years old. I can't understand how a car with this amound of mile developed a problem that, as per the dealership service, is going to have to have the engine replaced! I am not the original owner, however, I have had the car for about a year. I am overly dilegent about changing the oil out every 3g miles and with mobil 1 syntec oil. All of this pretty much happened over night. The car developed poor performance/no power, the engine indicator came on and, being concerned of course, I took it to the service department at a Chevy Dealership by me. The cat-converter was found to be clogged and was changed out free of charge considering that it is warrenteed to 80K. However, the tapping noise continued. When I took it back to the service department, the engine was scoped and I was told that one of the pistons had developed a slap and the inside of the cylender was scored. Does anyone have any information that would be useful to me in resolving this problem or have you had a simular problem happen and how did you deal with it? I contacted GM and they are in the process of researching this dilema and will contact the dealership, however when I tried to contact the person whom I had spoke with at GM, I got the voice mail and have not been contacted back.Other than having a psychotic episode over this, does anyone have a suggestion or can guide me into resolving this?
Thanks for letting me vent and your help is greatly appreciated.

Dave

 

Well, first, welcome to the forum Dave!!!

All I can think of is it was a Friday night or Monday morning engine and will need to be overhauled. The 3800's are typically very durable engines and it looks like this one just took a nose dive for some reason. Maybe some foreign object got inside the cylinder.

On the bright side it would be a great time to upgrade to Diamond Pistons though.