I wonder if anyone has heard of this? Had a slight knock on start up that went away almost immediately. Went to the shop and was told it was probably piston slap, that 3800's are known for this. Went to a Pontiac dealer and was told that this is a common problem, they have a lot of dissatisfied customers with the same problem, GM was aware of this and had no intention of doing anything about it. I did not buy the car new I bought it in Oct. 2000 and it had 124000 kms (about 80K miles) when the knock started. Now it's worse ant the engine light has come on and it chugs when running. I called one engine rebuilder who says he won't touch a 3800 and told me to buy a new one from GM because there are no aftermarket parts available to rebuild it with. I would hate to use GM parts and have the same thing happen again. I don't race the car, in fact my wife uses it mostly to go back and forth to work each day (about 15 mi.) and I drive it once in a while on the weekend. It has been suggested by many that I just junk it and get it really warm and then trade it in for a Ford!

It got worse! A new block from GM in Canada is $4300 then another $1500 or so to install it. So now I have an old car with a new motor and another loan.

Piston slap is just an annoyance, not anything that will damage the engine. It really isn't anything to worry about. Your check engine light and performance problems are probably not related to the piston slap.

My guess would be that you have dirty injectors, but you might want to get that code read before you get any work done.

Junk it and get a Ford. That is considered profanity on here. And you only by a ford (Car) if you seriously want to spend your career driving it to the shop(experiance)