Hello everyone and welcome. In this video
we're gonna be talking about five things
which you should never do in a brand-new
vehicle. Now the definition of brand-new,
of course, will change depending on the
vehicle, but generally we're going to be
talking about the first thousand miles
of which you're going to be breaking in
your vehicle, so check your owner's manual
it'll tell you you know what that
break-in period is but we're gonna be
talking about five things which you
shouldn't be doing during that time.
Now I think it goes without saying, but I'm
going to say it anyways:
In the event of an emergency, ignore
everything in this video and just do
whatever you need to do to be safe.
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.