all my motors (two LS1's and an L77) have made some kind of noise tick tick tick whatever, it's a characteristic of something that isn't a finely tuned performance machine but more akin to a muscle car. The price reflects this!
That said, get a professional opinion from someone who knows what the noises are don't just hear a noise and assume "piston slap" the amount of times I have heard piston slap to describe every noise under the sun out of a GM motor makes my head spin.
So yes, stop tooling about and googling, reading forums and making up theories and get an opinion from a professional - then a second one to make sure the first guy isn't making stuff up.
Professional advice can be unhelpful... With one car (not a Holden), I had dealer professionals and even manufacturer‘s experts listen to an obvious sound. I have no issue in hearing yet these
experts clowns couldn‘t hear anything... It seems the only qualification they needed to be classified as experts by their employers was some form of industrial deafness and the ability to look like they are straining to hear something... Unsurprisingly, when you ask them a question, they’d say “what”...
On a more serious note, Holden sell their V8’s as performance machines, not as cheap disposable 50’s styled muscle car clunker... In the case of my circa $70k Motorsport, it was advertised to meet GM level 3 track certification, as was the Director which was the performance luxury side of the same coin. So when buying, one has a more defined may be more refined expectation than what the 50’s offered...
When purchasing such a vehicle, my expectation was that the engineering and manufacture was well sorted and thus the product itself was well sorted... There was nothing to dissuade me from such a reasonable expectation. Had Holden made it known (through printed media, tv, radio adverts) that their LS3’s were 50’s muscle car throwbacks (and thus sounded like a bucket of bolts when starting) or the selling dealer made similar representations, then it would be unreasonable for the buyer (me) to have a more modern and refined expectation of the LS3.
But there was never such representations made so it would be unreasonable for the seller and/or the manufacturer to now say that it’s acceptable for the LS3 to sound like a bucket of bolts when cold. So the assumption in law must be that their product (LS3 performance vehicle) is as refined as other similar priced vehicles. And as I haven’t heard a Ford V8 with such lifter and piston noise issues, Holden has even less legs to stand on (legally speaking)...
I guess this is all highlighted by a case in New Zealand where a noisy engine was found to be unacceptable and that’s why the
seller was forced to refund purchase price to the owner.
A rattling bucket of bolts the LS3 should not be... and down under, all dealer mechanics MUST be required to pass a hearing test before they go out for a test drive with the customer to assess some noise problem
Luckily I have no such issues yet... but the car has done less that 10,000kms so is still a baby.... there is time for the engine to age i to it’s 50’s in the next couple of tens of thousands of kms from what’s been posted
