I have heard of this before. It sounds like if you baby your Z too much, it will always be a baby. Lack of power, leaky rings, etc.

It sounds like a mixture of baby-steps and pushing the Z is the right answer. I think taking the Z out and redlining it daily isn't such a good idea, but the other extreme of babying it may be not such a good idea either.

Thanks for this Steve,
Todd

 

the Motoman technique is the way to do it....when we break-in new airplane engines we run the engines pretty much no differently than if they were already broken-in.

We use full throttle on take off and climb. The only difference is for the first 50 hours of operation we vary the engine RPM in cruise.

There is ABSOLUTELY no need to baby the engine. by doing so you WILL create a slower performing engine.

Get on it at least once every 30 miles or so.... just briefly redline it and put it under some load for a minute or so.

In airplanes we run a mineral based oil which has no detergent. The detergent is slippery which is good for a broken-in engine, but on a non-broken in engine we want an oil that will let the cross-hatch cuts in the cylinder "cut" the rings properly.

I've not heard of any type of mineral oil based break-in for cars and I wonder why??!

The most important thing however, is to make sure the engine is up to normal operating temperature before putting it under a good load.

and speaking of loads..... the Nissan technique of 4K for 1200mi. is a load of $hit.

 

just thier way of CYA

 

The main reason for the break-in is to seat the rings properly.

If you dog the car immediately with fresh cylinders, the pressure on the rings will torque them downward and they will essentially gouge the cylinder walls. The problem obviously won't kill the car, but it will decrease compression in the long term.

Once the rings have properly worn into place, this can no longer happen.

Do the break in. Don't listen to naysaying engineers. I deal with engineers daily. Not all of them are geniuses.

Dead

 

The reasoning presented here is good, but the only scientific way would be to try 100 or 1000 engines and then try to find some correlation with power, the looks of the cylinders, breakdowns, or whatever. Otherwise, we're all just going on hunches.

The Honda F3 pistons might be typical, but with just two, how can I know for sure? I don't even know if the breakin was followed as stated. We seem to have lots of evidence without any data to back it up.

 

You're 100% right. 1000 engines may not even be enough. One person's version of proper break-in can be a lot different from the next person's. One person will baby the car - probably not the best idea - and the next will "break it in the way you plan to drive it", which with an extreme driver is also probably not such a great idea.

Moderation works well in life - metal-to-metal contact is no exception. I think it's ok to have some fun during the break in, but pushing it could hurt your investment. I always see fairly new cars on the highway that smoke more than they should. There's little doubt in my mind that somebody was mean to those cars when they were new.

Dead.