This pole has been viewed 524 time, only 24 responses. Seems to be about equal responses.

 

Like some others have said, read the manual. I am at 1000 miles now and for the first 500, I took it pretty easy. After 700, i started to dip into the power a bit but never redlined it. Now that I am at 1000 miles, still have not fully redlined but have gone on several spirited drives. The car feels better than ever and the notchiness in the shifting is almost non existent.

 

I would never go 10k miles on the original oil!! This car will be on the track shortly after I get it, and I would never, ever put ~2-3k track miles plus 7k street miles on original oil. Maybe I'll do the first track day with the original oil, even that I would be hesitant!

 

Basically followed the manual. I took it mostly easy until 1k, with a few 3rd-gear WOT punches up to 4-5k thrown in. "Seating the rings" and all that (not likely on a modern engine w/ low tension OEM rings ), but really just an excuse to have some fun in the first few weeks of owning it.

It saw the redline in 1st/2nd @ ~1.1k while "demonstrating" the car to my brother for the first time . Now I punch it whenever I feel the need...

 

Your rings are set for the most part in the first 100 miles. Compression sets the rings, not rpms. You should have taken your rpms up to 6k, let off the throttle, and let the engine slow you down.

I took mine to redline 12 times in the first 100 miles. I don't burn any oil, no ticks, nothing.

 

As someone who used to work at a Ford dealership... whether your car has 10 miles or 10,000 miles, it has been hammered on. The sales people will go drive the cars all they want and most don't care if they break in the car unfortunately

 

I redlined mine with 4 miles on it. Seated the rings all the way home. Tuned (steeda 93) it at 1,000 miles after making sure she would hold together. At 23,500 miles, the car couldn't be stronger.

 

I waited until shortly after 500 miles to bring it to red line!
The first 500 miles I kept altering the rpm while driving and did not bring it above 5K.
After 500 mi. I have been driving it very spirited
I have a Moroso oil catch can I put on when the car had 100 mi.
I kept checking it every 100 mi. Between 400 and 500 mi. I noticed the amount of oil in the catch can was much less I'm almost to 600 mi. My guess is there will be even less oil next time, as the rings have fully seated!
These things sure like to rev out!

 

Seating rings is easy. While driving about 40 mph accelerate to 60 then de-accelerate to 40. Repeat this step about 10-15 times. Done. Rings are seated. Under acceleration the force of the piston traveling down will cause the rings to pitch up, and under de-acceleration the rings will pitch upward. I am talking about the face of the ring BTW. The issue with keeping rpm constant is that you will only seat the rings on part of the ring face. By varying the rpm the ring face makes contact with the cylinder wall at different contact points causing the ring to seat in across the entire surface of the face.

The machining technology today is so much more precise than it was years ago. You aren't going to get a ton of metal during break in like we did with engines from yester-year. You'll get a little but not much and it will mostly be piston ring material.

The dreaded tick in these early 5.0 engines was caused by a timing chain tensioner.

And to the other poster who described the first 5 minutes of a freshly rebuilt engines life probably being the hardest, right on man. In the shop I worked in we always abused the fresh engines within the first 5-10 minutes of run time once AFR was set. The philosophy was if it is going to fly apart we would rather know now than later. If something is wrong then something is wrong and breaking an engine in before running it hard will only delay the inevitable. I have never seen an engine failure where the cause was poor break in. I have seen rings not seat properly due to excessive idling but that's about it.

 

Not if you special order it and watch it come off the truck.

 

Yeah a catch can is going to be my first engine mod as well, can definitely see how it can be an indicator of effective break-in too.

I've always followed the engine-braking method of engine break-in as well. Accelerate fairly aggressively 3/4 of the way up the tach in say, 3rd gear, engine brake back down to say, 1/3. Repeat a few times, call it a day. I definitely take it easy for the first 500 but after that I start pushing so that by the time I get to the first 1000, I'm rippin' on it.

I've also heard a lot of people saying you should drive it off the lot like to plan to drive it all its life. Meaning, if you plan to drive hard, drive it hard from day 1, but I can't do it. I have to struggle to put aside my mechanical sympathy to do a 1 minute autocross course in a moderate-mileage beatup import, I can't rip on a car I can still smell the carpet glue on.

 

Not so fast. Each mustang coming off the line hits a chassis dyno and then each are road tested. Have you seen this video?

 

And it's not just Ford that does that. I was at the Subaru plant in Indiana a few years back. Every car there gets a redline blast on the dyno and every 20 minutes a random car is thrashed on their top-speed ring and handling course, then parked up with the rest for delivery to a dealer.

 

Best Answer in the thread

 

+1..

 

Exactly.

 

It does not really matter as long as you do not hold the car at certain RPMs for prolonged periods of time. Its perfectly fine to mash the throttle, let it rev up through the range and then let off the throttle.