I'm sorry this is nuts....I've been working on turbo cars since the early 80's and have had my hands on some very high hp turbo cars. On every engine build I would put in the dino oil on a new engine break in the cam, it was hydraulic, let things cool dump the oil change the filter make sure things were ok. Then put in synthetic and blast the engine down the road at 20psi. I have NEVER had a single failure. With regard to the internals...rings seat immediately, valves are pretty much the same. Bearings when new sure are soft, but with time get harder.

Have you ever pulled the bearing out of a good engine that has more than 100k on it. They are usually rock hard.

Trust me if you ever saw what gets done on the assembly line after the car is started then you wouldn't worry about break in.

Just get your EVO's and enjoy them for what they were built for.

 

Okay everybody, what's the final answer ? Boost or no boost? Regular or synthetic oil initially? Salt over my shoulder every mile for first 50 miles? Let's see if we can get some sort of group consensus since this is actually a pretty important issue.

 

My vote: No boost, synthetic oil, oil change after 500 miles. Then drive it like you stole it.

 

I'm going by whatever the book recommends. I'm sure knows that engine much better than anyone here.

 

You absolute best bet =

Change out the ****ty mobil 1 factory oil and dump in some Amsoil 7500XL New Car formula (10w30 will be fine). Its still synthetic oil but made to promote instant ring sealing. Very good stuff.

Run that for 500 miles and change it, put 7500xl back in until 1000 miles. Then run some regular Turbo Formulated Amsoil 10w30. I run amsoil in all my turbo cars, and thats how I broke in my WRX.

 

WHat??? I have no idea what you are talking about... please explain???

 

When it comes to breaking in 4g63 motors... when we re-built mine, one of the manuals said to "run the car at full throttle from 30 mph to 50 mph and let the engine decelerate itself, don't use the break." It said to do this I think 8 times to seat the rings.

However, this information was pertaining to a rebuild... I had heard that cars now come "already" broken in... but I am not sure how reliable that information is???

Anyway, I took it easy for the 1st 1,000 miles or maybe more... I can't remember for some reason, but I did change the oil after 50 miles, 250 miles, 500 miles and then 1,000 miles... after 3,000-5,000 miles I started using synthetic.

 

Depending on the vehicle the assembly line people ususally have the car running and have the car tested after it is started the 1st time.

IE - At the Corvette factory they start the car on the line then as it moves to the end of the line the car will go on an emissions dyno to make sure everything is cool with the engine. That person will run the car up to 70mph on the dyno and keep it there for a couple of minutes then run the car in reverse too. Not quite as fast, but fast enough. Beyond that they give the car to another to ensure the cars aren't leaking or anything is broke. Oh they use MOBIL 1! So take your Amsoil and fly a kite. Hell even my co-worker who crewed on a Grand AM team said that the CART teams use Mobil 1 as he watched a gentleman pour Mobil 1 in a 15,000 RPM engine. So if it's good enough for a mutlimillion dollar CART car it's good enough for your 30k EVO.

Now as for the actual assembly of the EVO and it's break in. I think it's pretty well done at the factory. I doubt very much that they want one coming back with a shot bottom end or blown turbo.

 

IC, so is there any real need to "break in" a new car, or can you run it ***** to the wall???

The early oil change make sense. A buddy of mine used to work at an oil change place and he said they had this "oil flush" that would flush out all kinds of crap out of engines and that new ones were recomended to have it done. He said you could see all kinds of debris come out of new motors!

 

Just to put it uot there for the "die hard" oil guys. There is a jiffylube type place, forget the name now, that has a cool oil service.

It is a suction device that attatches to a special oil drain plug (that they install) and removes your oil via vaccum (instead of gravity) to remove more deposits. Obviously, no matter how thin the oil, synthetic or regular, some metal shavings may hang up on walls or the oil pan, to only be recirculated after new oil is replaced.

You can buy aftermarket devices that work also but they usually remove from the dip stick, not creating a "vaccum" to the entire system.

.02

 

Just got a new Evo. VIII! I had a question about the proper engine break-in procedure though... I know that on first drives people push the car to the redline, I certainly did. Even though the book, and several websites recommend that revs be kept under 5,000, does anyone think that a few quick runs like this on a new engine, even if I was really good to it for the next 500 miles, would negatively affect it? Some turbo eclipse came up to me at a stoplight a few hours out of the dealership, and dared to challenge my lancer, so I had to smoke him twice without even dropping the clutch! I'm just concerned that this could impede my performance down the road. Comments please!

 

dude...you just spend at least 32k on the car.... wait and make sure you got that engine broke in before you go puttin it up to even 5k rpm..... keep in below 3k for about 1k miles...then at about 2.5k youll be able to really strech the evo's legs

either that....or deal with bust engine components somewhere down the road

 

look in the owners manual..they tell you how to break it in...and you can tack it to to 5k jus don't rip it to redline and you'll be ok....

 

Watch the clutch there is a warning label that is removed at dealer warning that clutch is a high performance unit and is very sensitive.

 

I know guys... I'm feeling so guilty about it... I promise to drive under 5,000 for the rest, but just wanted to know if only doin' that would mess up the way the piston rings contacted the cylinder...