Like I said, I think it goes without saying, but some people out there may value their car over their own life you shouldn't do that you should value your own life. So you know the biggest things we're going to get into of course have to relate to the engine and these are going to get somewhat controversial, but you know, one of the biggest things about breaking in a new vehicle is breaking in the engine and making sure that these piston rings seat properly on your cylinder wall so on your cylinder wall you know you've got that freshly honed cylinder bore and you want to make sure you get a nice seal between that and these piston rings. Now these piston rings have some spring tension in them which allow them to expand out and rub against that cylinder wall but that's not really what's going to be doing the majority of wearing in this piston ring on that cylinder wall. Really, you've got the combustion process occurring on top of it.
Those gases are going to pass in here, they're going to get in these gaps, get behind the piston ring, and force that piston ring out, and expand it out on that cylinder wall, and that pressure is what's going to wear down that cylinder bore. Now you don't need an excessive amount of pressure to do this and this is where it gets kind of controversial so points 1 and 2: Don't floor it and point 2: Don't bring it all the way up to you know red line to your highest RPM, and you know there's certainly people out there will say a hard break-in is necessary. We're going to talk about you know kind of why that's not true based on all the data that's out there based on all the information that's out there and based on what all the manufacturers out there recommend and so basically what you're doing, like I said, you're sealing these piston rings up against that cylinder bore and wearing it down to have a nice seal. Now you don't want to do this too fast and with too much pressure.
There's no reason. You can cause damage. If there are imperfections, you're going to wear down those inf-- imperfections too quickly and that could cause hot spots which could cause problems. So you want a nice gradual wear of that cylinder bore with these piston rings so that you create that good seal and some people out there will say you know for performance if you want maximum power you need to floor it, you get that perfect seal, and the only way to do that is with super-high pressure, but if you look at performance cars and what they recommend this is not what they recommend doing so just a few examples starting with the Nissan GTR for the first 300 miles they recommend not going over 50% throttle and they recommend not going over 3,500 RPM, and that's for those first 300 miles and so you know as you can see I.
Mean obviously the GTRs performance vehicle, obviously they wanted to have the performance that you expect from it. Why would they recommend that if they didn't you know believe that to be true if you know the best method of breaking in that engine was with lighter throttle applications and without going to super high rpm. Another interesting example is the new Acura NSX, and one of the cool things that they do is they break this in from the factory and so they have a procedure where they put the equivalent of about 150 miles on the engine varying the load and not exceeding 4000 RPM on the engine and what they say this does is that when the customer takes delivery of their new NSX. They can go straight to the track because they've already put in this engine break-in process and so you know from the factory the cars good to go you can take it out to the track.
Now why would Acura spend the time and spend the money on breaking in an engine keeping it under 4,000 RPM varying the load if it wasn't necessary to do for the safety and performance of that engine? They wouldn't, it would be a waste of time and money like i said and so you know these are just another example out there of a company which doesn't break in from the factory that's their procedure keep it under 4,000 RPM. Through the equivalent about 150 miles and then let the customer thrash it on the track on day 1. So a cool thing that they do so you don't have to do the break-in procedure. Another example is the Corvette the new Corvette the C7 you know they recommend and they specifically say for performance reasons and you don't want to exceed 4000 RPM and you don't want to do full throttle starts in the new Corvette.
Basically, in those first 500 miles and then they have a separate procedure for the next thousand and they have you know a total of 1,500 miles of break-in, but for those first 500, keep it below 4000 RPM and don't floor it from a start so you know more recommendations out there, these are different companies they're all saying very similar things and actually had the honor to speak with someone who worked in FCA's performance engine division. They actually have their own land speed record car where they took a two liter out of a Dodge Neon SRT-4 and you know boosted that up to, I believe 800 horsepower of an absurd amount of boost in it and you know they had they were telling me they're break-in procedure for that engine with 800 horsepower and once again it was varying the load and it was changing the RPM, but not going to high. I believe the highest he went was 4,000 RPM, and I asked him, you know, you work in this world, you have access to this data, you know, is there any advantage of a hard break-in, and he said absolutely not there's no advantage to it you know it's just a risk and so it's an unnecessary risk you can do a lighter break-in obviously don't baby the vehicle. Give it you know decent throttle give it half throttle something like that, but you don't want to floor it out because you can run into that risk of causing damage if you get things in there too hot where these imperfections lie.
You want to wear them down more gradually rather than quickly now yes manufacturing tolerances have greatly improved and it's always getting better but this doesn't necessarily eliminate the need for break-in period. Typically, what it just means is that the break-in period will be shorter than they previously were as a result of better manufacturing tolerances. Okay, so we have points 1 and 2: don't floor it, don't bring it up to redline, and our third, we're going to talk about don't use cruise control and really the reason why you don't want to use cruise control is because you want to vary that engine rpm as you're driving and when you set cruise control you're just gonna have one set engine rpm especially with manual transmission vehicles which obviously aren't going to shift for you but basically don't want to use cruise control because you don't want to keep it at a constant speed. You want to vary the engine's load and you want to vary the engine's speed so that it gets used to all these varying conditions and it properly wears it in so you know you can take that into consideration and think you know maybe you shouldn't do a thousand mile road trip as the first trip in your car because you're probably just gonna be sitting on the highway at one set speed at one set throttle position at one set RPM and so you really want to vary the conditions for a proper break-in.
Moving on to number 4: You want to make sure that you avoid short distance travel. By short distance travel, what I mean is travel that doesn't let your engine fully warm-up. You want to make sure that everything gets up to operating temperature during all of your trips, especially for those first thousand miles because you want to make sure that you break everything in at operating temperature. You want to make sure you have proper oil flow, which is only going to happen once you get things up to operating temperature.
You also want to make sure that things are expanded to their final state so that when they're breaking in, for example, that cylinder it's going to expand out and wear down that cylinder wall and so you want to make sure it's at its operating temperature so that everything's in that expanded state in its warmest state so you get that proper break in. Now, that doesn't mean short distance travel as far as like driving around the city isn't going to be good, it's great to do that you know driving around the city you vary your engine rpm, you vary your load, and that's great to do. You just want to make sure that things get up to operating temperature during each of your trips while you're breaking in the vehicle. And finally number 5: You want to make sure that during those first thousand miles or whatever it may be you're not towing something super heavy something you know at its total capacity.
You may just want to avoid towing in general. There's several reasons for this: First of all, it's going to be putting a higher load on your engine. That's obvious because you've got more weight and to accelerate you're going to need more power and so you're going to be giving it more throttle. You want to avoid those full throttle applications and so in doing so you know the better ideas to just not tow for the first duration.
Now, some vehicles are going to be designed more for it than others. For example, this Crosstrek says it can tow 1,500 pounds, but you may want to avoid it entirely because this isn't really a vehicle setup for towing until you've reached you know the end of your break-in period so you're not going full throttle. Now there's two other reasons and that comes down to your brakes and your tires while you may not want to talk for those first few miles. Both of these have break-in periods your brakes and your tires and so you may not have is as good of braking power and you may not have as good of stopping power as a result of your tires because you will have a film essentially from the molding process of those tires that can be left on there so your stopping distance for the first couple hundred miles of your vehicle driving your vehicle isn't going to be as good as it will be later on and so in an emergency situation when you're towing, where you know you need that extra stopping power, it's good to wait until you know that your brakes and your tires are properly broken in.
So thank you all for watching and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below..
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