okay so let me preface this by saying I have read the manual's reccomendation of varying RPM's staying below 4500 RPM, below 95 MPH and no WOT. I have also read this article: http://mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm which offers some interesting points. I do not offer an answer but am looking for people 1st gen 2nd gen previous cars anything. How did you break in your car and how has it performed since break in? anyone break in on a dyno? if so do you have any specific tips as I may go that route? perhaps any advice given to you by the dyno operator? Any information, anectodes, or dyno graphs and proccesses would be appreciated very much by myself and im sure by the rest of people looking forward to new cars.
Thanks in advance,
Bryan

 

I had just PM'd Ryephile yesterday about this subject. I recieved a great reply and I'm sure he'll post here as well. In my searching I found this link. I wonder what peoples opinions on this method is as well.

I know this topic has been done to death but we don't have one in the R56 forum yet.

 

Thanks Manifest. trust me I have read as many of the 1st gen threads i can find, but yea no R56 yet. Cant wait to read the reply.

 

Manifest, than you for the link. That was a good read.

dean.

 

"Power break-ins" Goodness Graceious,!! For us newbie-amatuers that is really scarey stuff. This is not a rice-rocket motorcycle engine.I would not trust that theory 100%, but some of it may have a little merit. Not for me though.!!

 

i can understand the fear of some of the things he is saying and agree that it may be more usefull for a bike but some of his points arent without merit

 

Thank you familiarstranger and manifest. It was interesting reading the two articles then comparing what was being said. Neither said anything about exceeding driver's manual recommended RPMs, at least during the first 500 miles. Both recommended not maintaining steady speed throught the break-in period (vary the RPMs). Both are recommending heavy throttling to build up high combustion pressure, resulting in more force pushing the rings against the cross-hatched cylinder walls. Then there's the recommedation of slowly building up RPM beyond 500 miles (+200 RPM with every drive). The only real difference between this info and the driver's manual is that the manual suggests not increasing RPM beyond 4500 until 1250 miles (and then incrementally). The manual does say to avoid FULL throttle (which would yield high RPMs) but it doesn't say anything one way or the other about brief periods of heavy low RPM throttling (building up combustion pressure for short periods of time).

In other words, I don't see any great deviation from driver's manual recommendations. So .. I'm tempted to try wome variation of this (the mellower approach of the two) when my car arrives from the distribution center (been there more than two weeks now - grrr).

 

Ken I think I will do something of the variation on the second one. I may very well use a dyno to speed up the process. I really want to drive it hard

 

These particular break in secrets have been discussed plenty on NAM. I've treated new and re-built racing engines this way, but I did not do this with my new 2006 S last year. This is only the 2nd auto I've ever purchased new and it needs to last. I figured taking it easy until broken in is a proven world wide practice so it is good enough for me.

 

There are, and have always been, two schools of thought

1. BMW has a reason for writing what it does. Don't follow the directions at your own risk
2. Drive it like you stole it. After all, many of the engines are tested to the redline anyway.

 

The article says he has broken in over 300 engines his way. That's fine, but how long did they last? The BMW my MINI replaced had over 188,000 miles on it with no engine work. I want my MINI to stay a long while...

 

Oh geez. I read the title and asked myself, "Why would there be a thread on the board on how to break into a Mini?"

OY! Too much coffee today, me thinks.

 

ABSOLUTELY! I have a carchip interface and it tells me things I never knew were recorded. Max rpm, duration , max speed and duration, braking effort etc. If you have a 07, a lot of that info is stored in the key fob too so that when you go in for maintenance, they put your fob in a reader and get all the essentials.

 

If that is true, I would be very careful about break-in period. You dont follow the book, they can say "I told you so"

Kinda scary huh? I dont think I want anyone to know how many seconds I was say 500 RPMs over redline or whatever. None of their business... hehe

 

Simple solution -- drop the car off for service with the other fob (you get 2) I don't have any reason to use my second one so unless someone played with my MINI before I picked it up that one should be clean. Besides I think I'm being relatively nice to her engine, so far.

 

If its stored in the FOB, you can take it to the bank its still in the ECU. Memory is cheap these days

 

You bet its in the ECU BUT I don't think that it's stored forever though. Probably only the most current day, week, last ten trips, something, but not everything. I doubt that if you had a problem six months from now that they could look and see that you went to 5k rpm repeatedly during break-in. I just don't think that it is that comprehensive.

 

You know if it were that critical to keep the RPMs low during break-in BWM could easily have the REV Limiter at 4500 RPM for the first 1250 miles. It would be so informative to talk to the BMW engine engineers to get the whole story on the absolute best procedure vs. best procedure for the masses vs. procedure that is much quicker and 99% as problem free as the best. Until then my worry only lets me do as best I can to do what the factory recommends. Only 400 more to go...

 

Well lets hope Mini doesnt get too bent out of shape about going over 4500rpm's during the break-in period. I went up to 5000rpm's a couple times while out having some fun. One thing is for sure, its not terribly hard to get to those rpm's in this car. Another thought, Im sure the demo cars are being driven pretty hard and Mini will honor those warranties once they sell those cars. I can only say that I am thankfully out of my break-in period and no longer have to worry about it!

 

For a couple reasons, I think this may not be doable on a 2007s.

From the instructions, "3 more words on break-in: NO SYNTHETIC OIL !!"

The 2007 MCS comes with synthetic motor oil. So, you would have to drain the oil and put in natural oil. That might cause problems elsewhere, maybe not. However, would you be able to do this all in time for it to count.

"There's a very small window of opportunity to get the rings to seal really well ... the first 20 miles !!"

I don't know about Minis, but when I last bought a new car it had something close to 20 miles on it. The dealer claimed that it was from various stages of moving the car during delivery and dealer setup.

 

I don't think I would buy the one we took out for a test drive last week.

Mark

 

I can't vouch on this one for sure, but one of the MINI techs told me the first oil put in the engine has a special additive for breaking in the engine.

Take it with a grain of salt.

For my break-in I've been keeping it below 4k but use WOT for short durations in 2nd gear and above. I read the above article about pressure seating the rings some time ago.

 

I drive it like it's stolen. :-)
besides, it's a 2yr lease. :-)
life begins at 6k rpm. Still purrs like a kitten.

 

Are you driving an 07? life needs a shift for me around 6k

 

I agree. I'm a bit of a leadfoot, but even I have trouble getting it up to 4500. Maybe I'm a little more cautious than the rest of you speed demons out there.

I hit 4500 RPM once during break in. I was stopped on a downward incline trying to merge into fast moving traffic. I gave it everything I had, but soon as saw the needle getting to 4500, I shifted, and still was trying to pick up speed.

Of course, I started thinking ALL the paranoid things that were mentioned in this forum, BMW will read it on my keyfob, my warranty will be voided, the Mini Gods will decend to earth and destroy all of humanity, statues of the Virgin Mary will start to bleed tears, the ***** of Babylon will rise out of a VW dealership, and all sorts of other signs that my single transgression of 4500 RPM during break-in will trigger the apocalypse.

What did I do to stop the coming destruction of the earth? I pulled into a gas station, hugged my car, and drove off again. You may all thank me for giving you all one more day of driving.