Whats that ticking noise the engine makes on cold starts?
I noticed the sound as soon as the weather turned cold. It occurs whenever you press the throttle and only lasts for the first minute or two after a cold-engine start. This is issue is ongoing and has been around a long time. My latest logbook entry on this is here: Stardate 2003.12.06. Searches in various Sequoia forums for “ticking” or “lifter” or “piston slap” will give many results. Here’s a posting from Edmunds: “I’ve done a lot of research on this topic over the last month (via internet as well as talking with several Toyota mechanics) as my ’01 Sequoia has the same noise issue. What I’ve learned is that the noise comes from several sources including both the lifters and pistons. During startup, particularly on cold days, the main noise is “piston slap”. Supposedly this is due to the fact that Toyota used different metal alloys to produce the Head and Block and Pistons and because of this they had to build in different tolerances to account for the different expansion coefficient
