Tahoe M3

How important is break-in on this car? It seems as though every manufacturer recommends break-in limitations of RPMs, varying engine speeds, proper seating of valves, etc, but everything I read indicates that those are really not necessary. Is there anything about Porsche's flat-6's that really require a proper break-in?

CHEKUEN

do it..

Chris C.

The direct answer to your question is yes break-in is important, as it is with any high performance car/engine.

You can see my post a few weeks ago for some additional insight. Porsche's 4200 rpm hint is a bad one if you care about the long term health (and oil consumption) of your engine. Apparently European owners manuals have no such hint.

Various methods have been discussed on the 997 board (search there), but in general no redline, no lugging, varying rpms for long trips, gradual ramping of of rpm and frequent decompression/wind down in gears as the miles increase.

There's even a school of thought that Porsche has already done the most important break-in or else the wouldn't have synthetic in the crankcase from the factory,

Jim Michaels

I agree with Chris. First, Porsche measures the maximum hp of every engine on a dyno before it's installed in the car. That means high rpm. Second, after the car rolls off the assembly line a test driver (break-in driver?) drives it for several miles (many new cars are delivered with around 20 miles on the odo), and he certainly doesn't baby it. Third, as Chris notes, engines still needing break in should not be delivered with synthetic oil. So why does Porsche give such conservative break-in guidelines? I really don't know, unless it's to seal the new driver to the new car.