CameronD

Upon acceleration in 1st. When the car gets above about 5.5k the engine sounds very strained. Is that because it only has 1400miles? I had an S2000 and even when close to 9000k the engine didn't sound strained.
Porsches are made and meant to be really high in the rev band right? Is cruising along in first or second at close to redline(Maybe 1000rpm below) bad for car because the sound the motor produces at high rpm is intoxicating.

Jim Michaels

I think you're putting unnecessary wear on the engine by cruising in 1st or 2nd at 6k rpm. I think I'd consider the resulting sound as strained too, rather than intoxicatiing. I'm not following Porsche's break-in tip of keeping rpms below 4200 rpm for 2k miles either (I have 1325 miles on a Cayman), but I'm just using the higher rpm range (only up to 6500 rpm so far) briefly during acceleration before shifting up. For cruising (constant state mph) I'm staying in the 2k to 3k range. Porsche gave us a lot of gears and I use them all.

Palting

As I understand it, the engine is designd to handle the higher RPM range so long as it's appropriately loaded. When you are under WOT hard acceleration (NOT cruising) at the lower gears, or going at a high rate of speed in the higher gears, for example. It wasn't designed to hang out at high RPM with minimal load. Revving to 6K or higher RPM in neutral, for example. Revving to 6K-7K RPM in 1st and 2nd gear is simillar to doing it in neutral, almost no load.

Yes, if you keep the engine rpms at 6K-7K for PROLONGED periods in neutral or 1st and 2nd gears under minimal or no load, you WILL break your engine. You have all those mods planned. Best not to break the engine at least until you get all the mods in.

Norsk

I agree with Palting. By not following break-in procedure you are opening yourself up to compression loss, oil burning, etc. later on. I used to work on motorcycle engines, and when we did a rebuild we could set tolerances (such as bore/ring size/ring end gap/wrist pin) "tight" or "loose". If the bike was going to be raced the next day, we didn't want it to seize, so things were loose, just like it had accumulated mileage. If it was a street bike / tourer that the owner wanted to last a long time we would build it tight with the proviso that it needed to be broken in gently in order to let the parts seat correctly - no high RPM's - no lugging- no racing, etc. If the owner followed our instructions, that bike would go many miles before we needed to do even a valve job. So a manufacturer has a little dilemma as they try to satisfy drivers who will pound it beginning day one and those who want to leave it alone and drive it 100,000+ miles. Modern engine management helps them with preignition, rev limiter, etc. but it's still a piston engine...

So the first 2,000 miles at <4200 RPM's is what Porsche suggests; don't trust me, trust them.

I'll get off the box now

CameronD

What if I kept it under 4200rpms for the first 1000miles drove it not hard but harder than the break in request by the manufacturer for another 350miles and now the car sits with 1350miles and I will be driving to Arizona on Wednesday which will put the car at about 2000miles. If I drove the remaining 500miles following the break in procedure. Do you think the 350miles of higher rpms range will have destroyed the integrity of the motor?

Palting

Who knows, really? Only time will tell. But, in all probability, nothing terrible has happened. When you drive Arizona, make sure to keep the RPM's and speed varied to continue the break-in. On the way back, you can go WOT acceleration to redline at the on-ramps to hear that exhilarating sound. Just don't stay at redline for any length of time unless you're in 5th or 6th. Better have that fuzzbuster ready .