BE HONEST ... did you really keep your car always under 4k?

[NorthernVTGT]

Well, I've had the car for a week and I'm up to about 750 miles. My commute is about 80-85 miles per day right now, but I'm moving in a few months and that will drop down to 40 miles max I hope. :rolleyes: My commute is about as varied as it gets - 5 miles dirt road, 15 secondary, 20 interstate. I start out easy on the dirt, open it up a bit on the secondary, and often touch 100 mph or so on an open stretch of straight interstate up here in rural VT. Like a few of you guys, I've had a few 4.5 to almost 5k "windouts" passing idiots blocking the left lane. Having made about 10 trips to Germany over the years, I can tell you that I think blocking the left lane should be a 5 point ticket, and speeding (at least on the open road) should be only a "fuel wastage fee" or similiar, a-la Montana. Anyway, I'm not too worried about the revs, my commute is about as "engine speed varied" as you can get. I think the real damage comes from starting it cold and standing on it before it's warm. Isn't it the late-model M3 that drops the rev-limiter when the car is cold? BTW, what a poor man's 540 wagon this thing is. You CANNOT beat this vehicle for the money...

[ih8vtec13]

[quote name='Ken S']Pretty much kept it under 4K here too. What was harder was to keep the revs varied since my commute is 90% freeway. Ken[/QUOTE] Same here i was dropping down to like 40 - 45 and hitting the gas sort of hard to varey the revs, i guess it worked well the car is runnig strong at almost 3000 miles.

[Blaze]

I couldn't keep the LGT under 4k...just couldn't....I'm like a giddy little bitch in it. My daily commute is almost 20min on the freeway, 15 miles, with light traffic. I'm at about 1,100 miles now...and I'm getting around 19.5mpg. I figure the gas mileage will improve once I stop romping on it.

[SUBE555]

Stay in their *recommended* limits? Heck no! What fun is that. :D

[emlevins]

No

[frontrangeSubie]

no....drive it like you are planning on driving it....I hit the rev limiter a couple of times.....I guarantee you, I'll have 100K on this car and the engine will be just fine......

[Deer Killer]

[quote name='frontrangeSubie']no....drive it like you are planning on driving it....I hit the rev limiter a couple of times.....I guarantee you, I'll have 100K on this car and the engine will be just fine......[/QUOTE] 100k.. are you from german car land? I'd consider 100k broken in :)

[PGT]

[quote name='NorthernVTGT']Well, I've had the car for a week and I'm up to about 750 miles. My commute is about 80-85 miles per day right now, but I'm moving in a few months and that will drop down to 40 miles max I hope. :rolleyes: My commute is about as varied as it gets - 5 miles dirt road, 15 secondary, 20 interstate. I start out easy on the dirt, open it up a bit on the secondary, and often touch 100 mph or so on an open stretch of straight interstate up here in rural VT. Like a few of you guys, I've had a few 4.5 to almost 5k "windouts" passing idiots blocking the left lane. Having made about 10 trips to Germany over the years, I can tell you that I think blocking the left lane should be a 5 point ticket, and speeding (at least on the open road) should be only a "fuel wastage fee" or similiar, a-la Montana. Anyway, I'm not too worried about the revs, my commute is about as "engine speed varied" as you can get. I think the real damage comes from starting it cold and standing on it before it's warm. Isn't it the late-model M3 that drops the rev-limiter when the car is cold? BTW, what a poor man's 540 wagon this thing is. You CANNOT beat this vehicle for the money...[/QUOTE] The ECU on the M3 and the new M5 keep the power and revs limited until the oil is sufficiently up to temp and all is well. Even after being warmed up, I hear on the new M5 that power is limited to 400Hp until you select the 'power' mode where you get the full 500HP. Back when I had an auto trans on my Accord, I had a remote start option added to my Alpine alarm before I took delivery. That car got a full 5 minute warm up before I ever put it in 'D'. The worst thing you can do to a cold motor is floor it before the oil gets warm (especially in winter). Talk about ring wear. Funny though, BMW recommends NOT warming up the motor on my F650GS motorcycle. Apparently riding it right away is better than letting it idle for five minutes. She is a cold-hearted-b1tch though.....doesn't like to be ridden cold, despite what BMW says. Who knows for sure?? (Apparently the manufacturers do)

[rottenspam]

I've done a lot of research into proper engine break-in, not by reading the forums but by reading the available research on the topic. Basically the major harm that can be caused by winding out an engine isn't anything I've seen covered in the forms.... Pulled from a website not my orignal work....... The subies cylinders are delivered with an cross-hatched abrasion surface on the cylinder walls. A cylinder wall that has been properly "cross hatched" has a series of minute peaks and valleys cut into its surface. The face or portion of the piston ring that interfaces with the cross hatched cylinder wall is tapered to allow only a small portion of the ring to contact the honed cylinder wall. When the engine is operated, the tapered portion of the face of the piston ring rubs against the coarse surface of the cylinder wall causing wear on both objects. At the point where the top of the peaks produced by the honing operation become smooth and the tapered portion of the piston ring wears flat break in has occurred. When the engine is operating, a force known as Break Mean Effective Pressure or B.M.E.P is generated within the combustion chamber. B.M.E.P. is the resultant force produced from the controlled burning of the fuel air mixture that the engine runs on. The higher the power setting the engine is running at, the higher the B.M.E.P. is and conversely as the power setting is lowered the B.M.E.P. becomes less. B.M.E.P is an important part of the break in process. When the engine is running, B.M.E.P. is present in the cylinder behind the piston rings and it's force pushes the piston ring outward against the coarse honed cylinder wall. The higher the B.M.E.P, the harder the piston ring is pushed against the wall. The surface temperature at the piston ring face and cylinder wall interface will be greater with high B.M.E.P. than with low B.M.E.P. This is because we are pushing the ring harder against the rough cylinder wall surface causing high amounts of friction and thus heat. The primary deterrent of break in is this heat. Allowing to much heat to build up at the ring to cylinder wall interface will cause the lubricating oil that is present to break down and glaze the cylinder wall surface. This glaze will prevent any further seating of the piston rings. If glazing is allowed to happen break in will never occur. We must achieve a happy medium where we are pushing on the ring hard enough to wear it in but not hard enough to generate enough heat to cause glazing. If glazing should occur, the only remedy is to remove the effected cylinder, re-hone it and replace the piston rings and start the whole process over again. So bottom line on break-in is if you overrev the engine early on you can cause to much heat build up in the engine causing glazing of the cylinder walls. when this occurs is when you end up with oil consumption and blow-by. People who did not properly breakin their engines end up with oil consumption. However this does not mean that the rule of keeping it below 4000rpm's is ideal. Hitting readline after 50-100 miles isn't probably going to do any harm so long as it is not sustained high speed runing. Also don't rev it when the engine is cold and oil is not properly lubricating the internals as the engine will be running with higher levels of friction which will cause excessive heat and cylinder glazing. Of course varying engine speed is helpful beacause it changes engineloading and B.M.E.P. High levels of B.M.E.P. are desirable to help break in an engine and ultimatly reduce friction. But too much of it too fast can harm an engine. So there is a lot to the theory of run it hard and increase the load so as to increase the B.M.E.P. but don't do it all the time, or when the engine is cold.

[fan42025]

All very ineresting but one would need a computer controlled car with sensors all around the insides of the engine to work all this out and properly run it in. Not even BMW are close to this. IMHO: just drive the car dam it!

[Bigred]

Parts of that just don't make any sense. The main part, heat causing glazing of the cylinder walls, therefore causing high levels of oil consumption. If this was a possible outcome, from a marketing standpoint, the company would not rely on the end users to ensure that this doesn't happen, its just too risky.

[brad21]

FWIW, a salesguy at my stealership told me that the Legacy engines are "pre-broken in" and are the onlye ones to come from the factory as such. This he was told by a SOA guy at one of the dealer-only track days or something... regardless, I varied my rpm's and made a few trips above 4k but not for any extended periods. Didn't go to redline, that I can remember. I'm approaching the 5500 mile mark now with no problems to speak of. I am however still getting a little of the "stumbling" when getting on the gas, mostly partial throttle. Anyone else?

[rottenspam]

LOL, there are tons of things that are risks in owning a car! No what I didn't quantify was how much risk there was in glazzing your cylinders. Obivously it happens fairly frequently becasue I read about people with 1 qt of oil consumption every 1000 miles on their subaru's all the time while new. Which is eactly what you would expect to see on an engine that didn't run in correctly. Of course too much cross hatching in the manufacturing could cause too much friction early on and ruin the breakin, bad oil, etc. There is risk in everything. Regardless just do a search on engine break-in's on the net, no matter what the engine the glazzing pheonomona is real and it does occur....... I'm an enginer (not automative) and I'm sure the subaru Engineers have done a risk and probability assessment of how often glazzing could occur, and what precentage of those who glazed their cylinders would require warrenty work. Their calculations probably said it was cheaper to let end users break-in their own engines and pay out on warrenty repairs, then it was to break them in at the factory. Everyone runs such a risk assessment, and yes the cost of negative publicity can be to an extent quantified. BTW subaru is not unique to this risk, every piston engine that I'm aware of has this glazzing risk. Hell the rings can break if they get hung up on the cylinder walls as well. There are all kinds of risks in car manufacure. Heck my new LGT has rattles which will result in warrenty work on a car. BTW subaru like all car manufacures builds in an average warrenty cost per vehical, figuring there will on average be $$$$ of warrenty work on every car coming of the assembly line.

[tsyGT]

But some manufacturers don't have a recommended break in interval anymore. Is this because they make better engines? I don't think so. Maybe the 1K break in is for the drivetrain? I had no problems staying under 4K. . . while it was in the garage. :lol: Otherwise I pegged 5K for "emergencies" a few times. ;) tom

[Deer Killer]

[quote name='tsyGT']But some manufacturers don't have a recommended break in interval anymore. Is this because they make better engines? I don't think so. [/QUOTE] Cars were lasting too long?

[sde]

according to the manual, it is also recommended that you don't drive with the moonroof open either :D

[Bigred]

[QUOTE] Cars were lasting too long? [/QUOTE] lmao

[fan42025]

Never believe everything a salesguy tells you. Depends on what you mean by "pre-broken in". I would have thought all manufacturers would do some short testing as part of the QA. However, I think BMW engines are more than just "pre-broken in". Their engines also have much finer tolerances (so they say) and this explains why they only need an oil change twice the interval of ours. Hell, it wouldn't surpirse me if they can run their engines without oil for a short distance without causing damage. [quote name='brad21']FWIW, a salesguy at my stealership told me that the Legacy engines are "pre-broken in" and are the onlye ones to come from the factory as such. This he was told by a SOA guy at one of the dealer-only track days or something... regardless, I varied my rpm's and made a few trips above 4k but not for any extended periods. Didn't go to redline, that I can remember. I'm approaching the 5500 mile mark now with no problems to speak of. I am however still getting a little of the "stumbling" when getting on the gas, mostly partial throttle. Anyone else?[/QUOTE]

[PGT]

Don't play your stereo too loud until you have given the speakers a chance to break in. Otherwise you run the risk of burning up the voice coils. Seriously. :;): Recommendation is to play a white or pink noise track on repeat and 60% voume before you go to sleep. If you don't have those tracks on a reference disc, tune into a radio station or rather tune into static. This type of sound guarantees low and high frency excursion of all speaker components. You must do this every night for a week - make sure to buy a 12V trickle charger to keep you battery from being drained in the morning. Once you have properly broken in the stereo, feel free to crank on it. I guarantee you will have deeper bass, more transient midrange, and more depth to the stereo image. :lol: [Sad thing is, this really is the break in routine for hi-end home audio gear. I guess when you spend $30K on speakers, $40K on amp/pre-amp, $10K on a CD player and $5K on cables you SHOULD follow the manufacturers instructions]

[mhylim]

I tried to be good. I would only break the 4k barrier when in dire merging situations. Having just completed the break-in period, I can say that this car is really a pleasure at the redline. So eventhough my gratification was somewhat delayed, it was guilt-free.

[gtguy]

Lord, this debate is still going on? Some followed the manual, others didn't. The end. Kevin

[Sky Pilot]

I don't believe the manual when it comes to breaking in a new car. Have a read of the theories at [url]http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm[/url] and you'll see that at the best, things have changed a lot since most of the manufacturers break in ideas were formlated. The site is dealing specifically with motorcycles, but the theory holds for any 4 stroke engines.

[fan42025]

Very interesting. I've heard elsewhere a good reason to be hard during break-in is to prmote a uniform cylinder diameter. If you go nice and easy for too long, the piston goes so far "up" the cylinder thus not wearing it all the way. Then when you give it the gun after the break-in period, the piston hits an area it hasn't been worn as much and starts to damage the rings. Sounds logical but not sure if it's true. [quote name='Sky Pilot']I don't believe the manual when it comes to breaking in a new car. Have a read of the theories at [url]http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm[/url] and you'll see that at the best, things have changed a lot since most of the manufacturers break in ideas were formlated. The site is dealing specifically with motorcycles, but the theory holds for any 4 stroke engines.[/QUOTE]

[PGT]

[quote name='fan42025']Very interesting. I've heard elsewhere a good reason to be hard during break-in is to prmote a uniform cylinder diameter. If you go nice and easy for too long, the piston goes so far "up" the cylinder thus not wearing it all the way. Then when you give it the gun after the break-in period, the piston hits an area it hasn't been worn as much and starts to damage the rings. Sounds logical but not sure if it's true.[/QUOTE]] That makes no sense. The 'harder' you push a motor has an effect on engine speed (RPM), NOT how far a piston travels in the cylinder. The only shred of legitimacy may be if the higher heat levels of enthusiatic driving will cause the rings and bore to expand and further seat them. This also could lead to oil consumption if overdone. Again, all of this has been covered in earlier posts.

[Bigred]

[QUOTE] If you go nice and easy for too long, the piston goes so far "up" the cylinder thus not wearing it all the way. Then when you give it the gun after the break-in period, the piston hits an area it hasn't been worn as much and starts to damage the rings. [/QUOTE] Sure VSV (Variable Swept Volume).