Quote:
Originally Posted by 7thgear
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"Run it hard from hour 0" is wrong - here's why
The "run it hard" opinion hit a resurgence with a website from an air cooled motorcycle mechanic. Aside from the page being focused on motorcycle engines, his hard break in technique for the street only takes the bike up to 65 mph - that's fast for a bike but not much for a car. Bikes are also thousands of pounds lighter than cars so the engine doesn't have to work very hard if you're driving "normally". Some of the misunderstanding is that one person's babying is another's beating. The advice also says that the critical window of opportunity is only 20 miles or 9 dyno runs, then it becomes 200 miles for the street - which is it? It also says that power loss from an easy break in could be up to 10% while the gain in power as a result of using his break in technique could be up 10%. Call me a skeptic - car makers have done full price + taxes buybacks when horsepower was 5% lower than advertised (RX-8) and it's well known that many engines are underrated in their actual power (335i N54).
The engine in your new car really isn't a brand new engine either - it was already tested at the factory, had its first oil change, driven on a dyno at the factory, on/off the transport, and then around the dealership. In some cases the car was driven to another dealer and test driven by other people. Some high performance cars are even driven hard on a track at the factory for quality control. If the first minutes of engine break in determine the rest of engine life and performance, you already missed it.
Engine break in goals are proper heat cycling, mating of parts, and stress reliving accomplished by incremental increases in varying rpm and load. You definitely don't want to baby the engine but you don't want to beat it hard either. The most important goals are avoiding excess engine wear, idling longer than you normally would, steady rpm, and high load on a cold engine."
Taken from:
http://www.myturbodiesel.com