Knocking for a minute

[TONYCASH]

Had my festy over a year.ALWAYS runs perfect.Yesterday I started it in the morning and it knocked(not tapped) for a min and was fine within about 20 seconds.It is cold ,but,I have never had this happen.It ran fine.The oil was fine..any clues ???

[jglutz]

Could be a bunch of things. Imprtant to know is if it repeteats itself on another cold morning.

Could be fuel/ignition related pertaining to one cylinder. Sound should be like that of a diesel.

Could be low oil pressure...but that would be vlave tap like sounding.

Worst case would be piston slap....worn rings or loose wrist pin. Or, bad rod bearings. These conditions will produce a very distinct knocking sound that will be hard to locate, meaning the noise will trave the entire length ofthe cylinder. It is hard to determine if the orgin of the sound is top side or bottom side.

Keep an eye on the dip stick and for blue-ish smoke coming out of the tail pipe,

[WmWatt]

I would tend to supect misfiring and look into the ignition system.

[Tim]

Sounds like a problem I had with my car. It knocked on cylinder 4 when the engine was cold.

A new distributor cap and adjusting the timing cured it.

[MONSOON]

What weight oil are you using? If its to high of a viscosity it may be like honey in cold temps.

[geezerstiva]

Keep an eye on the dip stick and for blue-ish smoke coming out of the tail pipe,

and this would mean... what exactly? my car has been knocking for a while, and im guessing its a piston, but i have had some blue smoke before.
no thread jack intended.

[jglutz]

^^A loose fitting piston would create both a knock and blue-ish smoke.
Typically the upper or middle ring is shot.
A bad wrist pin or con rod bearings would make a lot of noise but not necessarily create blue-ish smoke.