Re: New engine break-in etiquette

[SailingFC@aol.com]

Well I went with the door number one(see below).

Find a nice country road, no traffic.  After the engine is warm(oil and 
water), drive normally to 2nd gear.  Then go WOT to rev the engine to 
redline(in 2nd gear).  Do not shift.  Then let off the gas and let it coast 
back to say about 2000 rpm.  Hit it again(in 2nd gear) to redline. Repeat 
this until all that black/blue smoke stops coming out of your tail pipe.  
Took about 5 times for me.

The idea is to seat the piston rings and that's all.  Nothing else needs 
"seating".  All the bearings have a set clearance and the distributor gear 
better have it's clearance(opps, 16V has no dist. gear).  Valves better be 
"seated" already.  The cams are suppose to push on the metal followers(no 
"break-in" here) and the cam chain (16V) starts stretching, from your careful 
adjustments, the moment the engine was started.

So what you want to do is seat the piston rings by putting a load on the 
engine, which expands the compression ring into the cylinder walls.  When you 
let off the throttle at redline is you cause a massive vaccum inside the 
cylinders, while decelerating, which pulls the oil up from the lower cylinder 
walls/crankcase and thus lubricates the "upper" cylinder and compression 
ring. (BTW, this is why the owners manual tells you to vary your throttle 
during the break-in period) Going WOT again repeats the process.  After a few 
times the rings seat, you have near maximum compression and the oil control 
rings controls the oil and thus no more smoke.  After this, go home and 
change your oil and filter.

I did this 15 years ago when I swapped my engine.  No problems with oil 
consumption whatsosever.  My pressures are currently at 185 psi, 185 psi, 178 
psi & 178 psi on cylinders 1 thru 4, respectively.  I can't complain.

I also have a friend with a fairly "new" motorcycle and it was consuming 
oil(no leaks).  I told him about the above technique and he tried it.  No 
more oil burning.  His rings never seated because the PO was afraid to rev it 
too high under load.

This technique worked for me and it got me full use of my engine in a matter 
of an hour(oil change).  YMMV.

-Dick-
78 Scirocco
Original Owner
http://member.aol.com/sailingfc/


In a message dated 5/1/00 5:59:57 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
skerocdriver@juno.com writes:

<< OK, heres my 3 known theories on breaking a motor. 
 
 1) "Drive the piss out of the motor". 
 (Ugg. I don't like this one very much. I advise not to do this.) 
 
 2) "Drive the motor as hard as you plan on using it AFTER its broken in".
 
<snip>
 
 3) "Drive the motor gently, low revs, smooth easy shifts, no WOT ever
 until 2,000 miles".  >>

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