Engine break in, any tips?

Why do you have to mention the CARS program in your post? You could have just kept the topic to engine break-in. Ugh.

ANYWAY - read the manual. It tells you how to break in the engine.

i have a mazdaspeed3 and the topic of engine breaking was a huge deal over at their forum.

the arguement was hard engine breaking vs soft engine breaking.

after reading 10+ pages of thread posts, i decided to go with hard engine breaking and did my first synthetic oil change after 100 miles.

for the cube, ive been soft breaking and driving like a grandma. people hate me here in LA b/c i drive so damn slow. but my cube is like my child, i baby the crap out of it.

at the end of the day, i dotn think it really matters. just take good car of your car and it will be nice to you too

I believe the main points of the manual in the break in section were that you shouldn't stay at a steady speed for too long, no hard braking and the "break in" period lasts for the first 1200 miles.

I agree with the Nissan recommended method.

The only article that I've been shown supporting the "hard break-in" was on built racing bikes. These bikes may have smaller piston rings & no accessories... I'd be concerned that the air conditioning pump, for example, would not handle a hard break-in like a bare, purpose built motorcycle engine.

I read all the stuff in the docs, and I am doing all that.

I had heard once that you should just drive like you will allways drive it, and not baby it when breaking in an engine also.

This is a great car.

none said:

I agree with the Nissan recommended method.

The only article that I've been shown supporting the "hard break-in" was on built racing bikes. These bikes may have smaller piston rings & no accessories... I'd be concerned that the air conditioning pump, for example, would not handle a hard break-in like a bare, purpose built motorcycle engine.

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ah yes... great point.

i do remember a lot of the guys arguing the fact that race bike use the hard braking technique. both sides had convincing arguments but at the end of the day this is an econocube and built more for mileage than speed... ill go with the manual dont want the a/c breaking on be during the summer heat :no:

i babied mine for the first two gas tanks. roughly 700-725 miles. now i'm accelerating a bit harder when i'm getting into the freeways and stuff but still keeping it under the recommended 4k rpms and not doing any hard engine braking.

How long is too long to stay at a steady speed? 5 min or half hour, 2 hours?

And what is engine breaking? Is that downshifting and letting the engine slow the car? That is how I have all ways slowed by manual cars ever since the breaks went out on my '65 bug. But I don't have to worry about that with the auto trans do I? I just left my foot off the gas and cost to a stop. Is that bad?

staticguy said:

How long is too long to stay at a steady speed? 5 min or half hour, 2 hours?

And what is engine breaking? Is that downshifting and letting the engine slow the car? That is how I have all ways slowed by manual cars ever since the breaks went out on my '65 bug. But I don't have to worry about that with the auto trans do I? I just left my foot off the gas and cost to a stop. Is that bad?

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yeah exactly. except i use a combination of brakes and gears to slow my car down. if i use one or the other i feel like i'm putting too much strain on either part. drop it in neutral and use only brakes to decelerate=faster brake wear. downshift gears and no brakes at all=faster clutch wear. so i use both lol

but yeah its irrelevant with an auto transmission.

none said:

ANYWAY - read the manual. It tells you how to break in the engine.

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None You didn't!!

Drive it like you stole it!

Cars aren't like they used to be, so touchy in the break in period.

I build race engines for Hondas and have broken in many many engines and all of them have perfect compression numbers and are still driving great..

What I do is, keep the rpms below 3K and generally baby it.. Once per day, run the hell of out of it.. Take off hard from a stop and rev it till it bounces off the rev limiter and then shift.. Do this until the end of 4th gear if you can... Then back to normal baby driving.. After you have 600 miles on it then run it pretty hard all the time until you get to 1,000 miles.. Then drive it any way you like..

Dont change the oil until you have at least 5,000 miles on the engine.. Also dont use synthetic oil until you have about 15,000 miles on it.. When/If you do switch to synthetic, dont ever go back to regular oil..

tgreaves said:

I build race engines for Hondas and have broken in many many engines and all of them have perfect compression numbers and are still driving great..

What I do is, keep the rpms below 3K and generally baby it.. Once per day, run the hell of out of it.. Take off hard from a stop and rev it till it bounces off the rev limiter and then shift.. Do this until the end of 4th gear if you can... Then back to normal baby driving.. After you have 600 miles on it then run it pretty hard all the time until you get to 1,000 miles.. Then drive it any way you like..

Dont change the oil until you have at least 5,000 miles on the engine.. Also dont use synthetic oil until you have about 15,000 miles on it.. When/If you do switch to synthetic, dont ever go back to regular oil..

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would this be a good idea for the cube, though? it certainly does not have what most would consider a race engine

Interesting! The plot thickens...

But as stated before, those are race engines... right? Special pistons, possibly blueprinted engine specs. Or are you referring to your OEM road cars?

none said:

Interesting! The plot thickens...

But as stated before, those are race engines... right? Special pistons, possibly blueprinted engine specs. Or are you referring to your OEM road cars?

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Both really.. One one car(my racecar) was track only.. All of the others were either daily drivers or street/strip fun cars..

Most were aftermarket pistons(some were oem builds).. Standard JE, Wiseco, and Hastings rings, nothing fancy..
I always build to blueprint specs, is stupid not to..

Other cars that I own (Honda prelude, Honda fit) have all been broken in using this method when I bought them brand new(from the factory engines).. They all have perfect compression numbers..

break-in on american and japanese automobiles is an outdated process....engines are built much better these days, and oil quality has made leaps and bounds over the decades......you could probably bounce off the redline until the fuel tank drys up on the same day you take delivery with zero issues...I've pretty much done that to every new car I've owned with zero engine issues to speak of. Whats important is to not skimp on oil changes or use the wrong oil viscosity. Not too long ago I had a vehicle in the shop that was running fine, but making a tapping noise. Turned out the vehicle had been on the same oil and filter for about 23,000 miles and a connecting rod bearing finally wore thin. The whole motor was trashed upon further inspection and the customer chalked up 6700 bones for a replacement.

dink74 said:

Drive it home and directly onto ramps, drain it and remove filter. Refill with

and install a good filter not a FRAM. Smile go inside reapply the foil to your windows and put on your

and read the directions from Royal Purple.

LOL

Dink

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Dink...you're my hero. :yes:

MasGreen said:

break-in on american and japanese automobiles is an outdated process....engines are built much better these days, and oil quality has made leaps and bounds over the decades......you could probably bounce off the redline until the fuel tank drys up on the same day you take delivery with zero issues...I've pretty much done that to every new car I've owned with zero engine issues to speak of.

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you might want to let Nissan Motors know about your little secret. they've included a section on proper break-in procedure in the manuals we got with our cubes.

I go by the owner's manual in commodity cars like this.

Sure engineering is better these days, but it's still mass produced stuff. I want to let my air conditioning compressor vanes and CVT band have it easy for a while...