Excessive Piston Play in Bore? Piston Slap?

[jakub421]

Hi guys.
I took the head off of my 1978 320i today to replace the very bad valve seals and was inspecting the pistons and noticed quite a bit (?) of play in them.

I've been experiencing piston slap when cold, but otherwise it runs and drives great. Odometer shows 72,000 miles, I've put on about 6,000 since I've had it.

Below is a link to a video that shows the piston clearance within the bore. Is this excessive or can I live with it? It seems worse with the front 2 cylinders. There is zero ring ridge and the bores look fairly good.

https://youtu.be/kMECT2p1bpg

Thanks for the help!

[320iAman]

The only way to get rid of piston slap is a rebuild most just ignore it, live with it since when warm it goes away, the potential of piston slap is addressed when rebuilding-getting the correct bore of the block and then using piston skirt coating to mitigate it, generally with high end pistons with stock pistons clearances are tighter in that expansion is less.

Randy