Timing chain slapping on cold starts- something that worked for me

Hello everyone! First post on the forum!

wanted to share something as i started lurking a few weeks ago when my ‘14 tundra starting making a noise on cold starts that seems to match what others have experienced here, and seems to be the timing chain.

I’ve got 157k miles currently and starting in September as cold weather began to set in I started to notice this noise occurring. It would happen a few minutes after a cold start, when the oil temp gauge would read about 1/4 to the midpoint and would end when oil reached full temp.

initially i found that i could keep it from happening by keeping the rpms above 2k, either by holding the accelerator in park, or using the gear selector while driving to keep the rpms higher while driving.

i did pull the oil filler neck and verified that while everything looked perfectly clean, the driver side tensioner was flapping.

I seem to have found something that corrected it, at least the noise has stopped occurring.

2 things I have changed:
Currently running 93 octane.
Currently 700 miles into an oil change running HPL 30wt cleaner oil at their recommended 5:1 ratio. Roughly 1.7qts of this stuff along with plain old napa full syn 0w20.


Not sure which of the two is having the effect but its been two weeks and no noise whatsoever!

 

The 93 octane is doing nothing but wasting money. The thicker oil is probably inhibiting the oil from bleeding out of the timing chain tensioner keeping tension on the chain.

 

If you are having good luck with their cleaner, I would run hpl 0w-20. And see how it goes.

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/hpl-20w-engine-cleaner.360116/

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/alternate-thoughts-on-using-hpl.360198/

 

I’m inclined to agree with you on the fuel. I had a bunch of shell points so figured why not try it. Honestly was moreso to see if it would yield better mileage.

when the noise began though, i did have 5-30 in the sump, and 1.7 qts of the 30wt cleaner oil would not thicken up 0w20 all that much.

i notice too that during cold start sequence it had ceased to make that very diesely noise before it filly shifts over to the low idle. I suspect maybe it actually is cleaning things out within the tensioner and vvt solenoids

 

The HPL will help alot cleaning the crud out of the old tensioner, the ANs and esters are really gonna get all the gunk and varnish out. My truck had the intermittent tensioner slap, I've been running HPL HDEO 5w30 for awhile now, and after a few thousand miles I haven't heard the slap again.