Flashback

agreed

now all i need is my car to break it in

S197 GT

I drove the heck out of mine from the start.

deurges05

I'm doing the Ford recommended break-in, as I have in all my previous cars. The only addition to that, is that I change the oil at about 300 miles.

The page posted previously about hard break-in, reads like a late night infommercial, is the only one that can be found, and almost everyone who advocates doing it that way, uses that page as their sole source of information.

SixtySix

I think a lot people are reading too much into the "Ford recommended break in".

Read it again, out loud if you have to. The ONLY thing it says is to aviod constant RPM. That's it!

Nowhere does it say, oh don't take it to redline, take it easy on it, or anything else of that nature period.

It's not ambiguous at all. It's straight forward. If you're going to cruise the highway in the first 1000 miles, do so without the aid of cruise control and vary your speed.

That's all there is to it.

So driving it like you stole it, or running it liked a raped ape easily fits within the parameters of the "Ford recommended break-in".

My car didn't see constant rpm's, it saw everything from 0-145 mph and 0-6250 rpm's.

RRRoamer

True. And false. It IS the main page folks use for a reference. Because it is a web page and online. I agree with what he is saying. And, I know folks that have done the "run it like you stole it" break in on various vehicles (usually because they are having WAY too much fun with their new car or truck!) and end up with strong motors that simply didn't burn oil (to speak of).

Example: My brother bought a new 1997 GMC pickup with the 5.6 (I think...) Vortec motor. He broke it in by trying to find out just how stought the Vortec motor was (lots of running it up to redline and back down to cruise, etc.). And it has been a GREAT pickup. He has known several peaple with the the same truck and engine. His is by far the strongest.

He loaned his truck to a buddy that had his truck in the shop (body work from a minor accident) and he needed to tow a trailer. What was his buddies first comment when he brought my brothers truck back? "What have you done to this truck? It pulls a log harder than my truck." At the time, the truck was 100% bone stock. His friend didn't initially beleive him when he told him it was stock.

This truck now has over 170k miles on it. (as a side note and partially related to this story, he has run AMSOIL in it since it had 10k miles on using the one oil change a year or 25000 miles, which ever comes first method without doing the oil filter change every 6000 miles) When it was around 135k miles on it, he forgot his anual oil change. He realized that he had forgot when he noticed that he was down 1 quart of oil. At this point, it had been 18 months and around 25000 miles since his last oil change. And he had not put a DROP of oil in since then. It looks like his rings are sealing pretty well and he doesn't have any blow by to speak of. I remember this because he called me to "complain" that his high mileage truck was "burning oil".

So, between the information I have found (including the web site above), my own understanding of how IC engines work, engineering back ground AND experiences of friends and family, I think the concerted ring break in method is best.

What we need to do to solve this ONCE AND FOR ALL is to perform a proper test. I'll need 30 05 GT motors and about two years of dyno time. I'll randomly pick 15 engines for the "accellerate ring seating" break in method and 15 for the "take it easy with no constant speed" break in method. After each engine is broke in, I'll run each engine for the equivilant of 150k miles using the exact same load profile. Plus, I'll measure peak HP, torque, fuel economy (BSFC), blow by, and emissions from each engine every 5k miles. Then we can take the proper statistical look at all the data and come to a firm conclusion exactly what is the best way to break in an 05 GT motor.

So let's see, that will be about $75k for the motors, about 3750 hours on the dyno for EACH engine at a low price of (guestimate...) of $50/hour, plus my salary (as I am now the lead scientist for this experiment, I think around $150k/year should be about right...), so that works out to right at $6 million bucks. Anyone want to step up to the plate and sponser this experiment?

Mongoose

It all boils down to one thing. You are paying for it so drive it as you please. Those are my plans for sure.

RRRoamer

I can give you a big AMEN to that Mongoose!

MTAS

I picked my car up on a Friday night with 8 miles on it. The next morning, after letting it warm up, I took it to redline several times giving people rides and stuff. If it's gonna break, let's break it while it's under warranty I now have just over 3K on it and no problems of any kind. Just changed the oil yesterday (for the 2nd time) and put in Mobil1 5w20.