Too Soon? Drove my FR-S a little hard

[Flufffyninja]

Originally Posted by Mobius357

I figure until someone ponies up the billion dollars to rigorously study thousands each of countless different engines using a variety of break in methods...we're never going to have a real answer, so enjoy.

From my post in the break in thread. I'm not sure it was billions spent

On a fully instrumented bench the differences in break in can fairly easily be detectable. Poor break in will result in increased blow by gas results indicating poor sealing rings and potentially also increased oil consumption results (although so many things impact that it can be hard to isolate poor break in as a cause short of multiple tests and trending results). A typical good break in will normally have a few minutes being run at light throttle loads and low speeds to get everything warmed up. You'll then go into a standard break in pattern escalating rpm and loadings until you're at flat chat WOT. For a mass production engine you'd probably do that over an hour but for a development engine that may be as long as 10-24 hours to get as consistent results as possible

Obviously this is totally unrealistic on a public road. Therefore the instruction is to keep things low and gentle initially and then building up. In a perfect world that build up would include, after a few thousand miles, going balls to the wall to get maximum loading but again not necessarily something you want to insist someone does (look at some of the emotion in some of these posts when people think they've done something wrong).

I hate to bust a myth but most or almost all engines will not be factory broken in. Typically most engines will have been started for checking in the factory producing them. The bench won't be loaded, is unlikely to go above 3-4000rpm and will run for no longer than a minute or two. Some modern ones don't even fire the engines. They exist purely for noise checks, making sure the con-rods don't make a bid for freedom and that oil doesn't soak the floor first time the engine turns over. Once the engine is built into a car it'll be started and get a brief run on a rolling road but again no more than a minute or two although much more likely to go to red line in at least one gear. Then it's only delivery mileage on the car. That's driving to dispatch yard and on and off transporters. The Odometer will be connected at that point so you'll know the number of miles your car has done above that and its unlikely to be above say 6-10 miles (although I have known some get as high as maybe 30miles if some special check is carried out). Hardly run in!

That said the tolerances are significantly tighter meaning that early abuse is much less detectable by a customer and will have significantly lower impact. In summary RTFM and apply what it says
Don't get too paranoid about not being perfect though.

By the way I love the motorman website. One day I'm going to author a web site shouting the benefits of thinning the oil down with bleach or the power benefits of putting sugar in the petrol tank to see how often it gets quoted (I'd advise against both of those unless you want things to get expensive). I'll be generous and not call some of the things on there outright lies but he definitely misrepresents the truth meaning I can't trust anything posted on there.