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this is such an ambiguous and hotly contested subject. why does it need to be done? lets just say to seat the softer aluminum rings against the hard cylinder walls that have micro grooves or porosities. this is done to help the scrubbing action of the rings to keep the oil out of the combustion chamber and reduce oil consumption and maintain compression. this is why more oil may be burned during the breaking period during seating of the rings. heavy loads are not wanted during the first part of break in as blow by may occur and interfere with proper seating of the rings so limit rpms and or load during the initial runs. thruout breaking you want to increase rpms so tdc ring travel is reached and full cylinder to ring seating is achieved. now here is the tricky part....do we want a high psi compressive strength oil lubricating the metal parts or a low psi compressive strength during this period? there is no real data on this other than this is what we do, so do it! there is no or very little statistical relevant data to back up either of these. so the question is , if the newer rebuilds are tighter in tolerances why would you not want an oil that has a high lubricating compressive strength since they are still following and old breakin regime. why would you not want a high psi compressive strength oil all the time? most of the break in oils are very low in psi compressive strength. yes there is controversy on this but there is only one guy who tests the oils afaik.
if I have a metal on metal surface that is going to wear in against another , I would want the best lubrication to get the best melding tolerance between the two. if there is a break down in lubrication and metal on metal wear , I would want it to occur as slow as possible to prevent scoring and major grooves. I would check and change my oil filter after the first 1/2 hour of break in and then the oil and filter after the next hour. this is so inexpensive compared to a $20,000 rebuild . but why do they not recommend it???? ah but maybe they do? I know on my boat HP motor it was not until 10 hours.... OMG
But then that may make some sense and what do I know....... ??? nothing at all. I just try and make reasonable sense of stuff from what I gather.
break in periods were used on old high tolerance engines made years ago. todays engines have minimal tolerances and therefore require little to no breakin as per manufacturers. just food for thought
I am not saying all of the above is fact, most is , but I will ask you to back it up if you are going to dispute it. and yes please prove me wrong. its the only way we learn
this is such an ambiguous and hotly contested subject. why does it need to be done? lets just say to seat the softer aluminum rings against the hard cylinder walls that have micro grooves or porosities. this is done to help the scrubbing action of the rings to keep the oil out of the combustion chamber and reduce oil consumption and maintain compression. this is why more oil may be burned during the breaking period during seating of the rings. heavy loads are not wanted during the first part of break in as blow by may occur and interfere with proper seating of the rings so limit rpms and or load during the initial runs. thruout breaking you want to increase rpms so tdc ring travel is reached and full cylinder to ring seating is achieved. now here is the tricky part....do we want a high psi compressive strength oil lubricating the metal parts or a low psi compressive strength during this period? there is no real data on this other than this is what we do, so do it! there is no or very little statistical relevant data to back up either of these. so the question is , if the newer rebuilds are tighter in tolerances why would you not want an oil that has a high lubricating compressive strength since they are still following and old breakin regime. why would you not want a high psi compressive strength oil all the time? most of the break in oils are very low in psi compressive strength. yes there is controversy on this but there is only one guy who tests the oils afaik.
if I have a metal on metal surface that is going to wear in against another , I would want the best lubrication to get the best melding tolerance between the two. if there is a break down in lubrication and metal on metal wear , I would want it to occur as slow as possible to prevent scoring and major grooves. I would check and change my oil filter after the first 1/2 hour of break in and then the oil and filter after the next hour. this is so inexpensive compared to a $20,000 rebuild . but why do they not recommend it???? ah but maybe they do? I know on my boat HP motor it was not until 10 hours.... OMG
But then that may make some sense and what do I know....... ??? nothing at all. I just try and make reasonable sense of stuff from what I gather.
break in periods were used on old high tolerance engines made years ago. todays engines have minimal tolerances and therefore require little to no breakin as per manufacturers. just food for thought
I am not saying all of the above is fact, most is , but I will ask you to back it up if you are going to dispute it. and yes please prove me wrong. its the only way we learn
Not to dispute anything you say ;-) (I have no facts, this is the internet!!)
My understanding is that there are two schools of thought.
1) I want reliability and long life out of my engine - break it is easy with full synthetic oil to minimise the wear and 'bed' the components in nicely
2) I want power from my race engine - use a lower spec oil to allow the engine to have accelerated wear - you'll end up with a 'looser' engine with lower internal frictional losses and slightly wider tolerances, you'll burn more oil for instance but you'll make fractionally more power. Long term reliability 'may' suffer but its a race engine, power is king.
Anecdotally there was a motorbike race school in the UK, they were trying to break in the bikes and found that the fully synthetic oils were not allowing the engines to 'break in' as they expected. They changed to a lower spec (non-synthetic) and rode the bikes for a day and voila made slightly more power on a dyno run after. Engines lose a lot of power to internal friction!
To your point above this is why a lot of cars don't come with a 'break in' period any more - fully synthetic oils do a great job of limiting wear and breaking the engine in slowly which is what you want on a daily driver that has a 10+ year lifespan in the marketplace.
Anecdotally there was a motorbike race school in the UK, they were trying to break in the bikes and found that the fully synthetic oils were not allowing the engines to 'break in' as they expected. They changed to a lower spec (non-synthetic) and rode the bikes for a day and voila made slightly more power on a dyno run after. Engines lose a lot of power to internal friction!
To your point above this is why a lot of cars don't come with a 'break in' period any more - fully synthetic oils do a great job of limiting wear and breaking the engine in slowly which is what you want on a daily driver that has a 10+ year lifespan in the marketplace.
When I worked at a VW dealer in the early 1990's, we saw a bunch of oil consumption issues. The solution from the mother ship was to dissuade well-meaning customers from changing their oil prior to the 7500 mile specified first oil change. 5k miles was viewed as the minimum needed for proper break in. Some customers really fought this, some to their own peril. Sneaky customers went to other places for early oil changes, including one gentleman who had his 832 mile Golf towed in for major engine work after an unfortunate issue at Jiffy Lube...but that's another story.
Just thought I'd update this thread.
I did run the Joe Gibbs break in oil for 500 miles, and I just completed an additional 1k miles on regular dino oil, which I will be changing soon. I'm on the fence about going with dino for another 1k miles or switching to synthetic. The car has used just over half a quart of oil in 1k miles.
BTW, I've not been gentle on the break in. Lots of acceleration/deceleration at 3k to 5k rpm, with occasional visits to 6k. We have a couple of lightly traveled highways that are good for this kind of thing. Car feels great.
Any suggestions on what to run for the next 1k miles? I'll probably only put another 100 miles on the car before winter, so the oil will be changed in a month or two when I store the car...if that makes a difference.
The mechanic who rebuilt my engine also know nothing about Porsche's - He told me to break in with this oil laying around his shop - You can still find it on Ebay.
Just did oil/filter service on my 07 C4S - Smokes a lot but runs
07-10-2018, 12:13 AM
