Piston Slap: The Duratec Ranger's Mounting Problem?

Will writes:

Hey Sajeev,

My 2010 Ford Ranger XLT 2.3-liter automatic has been an amazing truck since I bought it new in 2010. Lately, I’ve got a vibration and weird sound coming from the driver’s side when stopped at a red light. It only occurs (or is noticeable) when it’s cold outside.

This sound occurred before and after I replaced the ball joint (driver’s bottom) as I was told by a mechanic at Ford it needed to be replaced.

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Piston Slap: The German TL's Audi 5000 Syndrome?

Mark writes:

Hi Sajeev,

I have a 2003 Acura TL-S with 106K miles. I bought the car in 2013 with 84K and it was/is in excellent shape. I checked and made sure the car had the transmission recalls performed (I know there were a lot of issues with Honda/Acura 5 speed autos) Back in July I noticed on a hot and humid day it was difficult to move the gear selector from P to Drive. It seemed stiff but there were no other indicators of transmission issues.

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Piston Slap: Byzantine Transmissions in Frozen Highlands

Mehran writes:

Greetings to you Sajeev and your evil twin Sanjeev, (yeah he’s dead to me – SM)

First of all thank you very much for answering my other question, just to give you an update on that, I ended up not buying the extended warranty. Now we recently bought a 2012 Toyota Highlander Limited to replace my wife’s old car(V6, 5 Speed automatic with the towing package which adds the trans cooler) it has 34K miles and this one has the extended warranty (100K or 2019). The issue that we have with the car is as follow, after a cold start (in the morning) if I put it in any gear (D or R) something funny happens, the transmission acts funny, it goes in and out of the gear couple of times. For example if I want to back-out of the garage when I put in R and give it a little gas it starts going but for a quick second it seems like that the transmission dis-engages and then re-engages and the tachometer jumps from 1K to 3K. If I wait about 10 sec after I start the car and then put in gear everything is OK.

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  • Sayahh I do not know how my car will respond to the trolley problem, but I will be held liable whatever it chooses to do or not do. When technology has reached Star Trek's Data's level of intelligence, I will trust it, so long as it has a moral/ethic/empathy chip/subroutine; I would not trust his brother Lore driving/controlling my car. Until then, I will drive it myself until I no longer can, at which time I will call a friend, a cab or a ride-share service.
  • Daniel J Cx-5 lol. It's why we have one. I love hybrids but the engine in the RAV4 is just loud and obnoxious when it fires up.
  • Oberkanone CX-5 diesel.
  • Oberkanone Autonomous cars are afraid of us.
  • Theflyersfan I always thought this gen XC90 could be compared to Mercedes' first-gen M-class. Everyone in every suburban family in every moderate-upper-class neighborhood got one and they were both a dumpster fire of quality. It's looking like Volvo finally worked out the quality issues, but that was a bad launch. And now I shall sound like every car site commenter over the last 25 years and say that Volvo all but killed their excellent line of wagons and replaced them with unreliable, overweight wagons on stilts just so some "I'll be famous on TikTok someday" mom won't be seen in a wagon or minivan dropping the rug rats off at school.