I break in how I am going to drive the car on a daily basis. The other thing to keep in mind which may have already been mentioned is that when you pick up the car from the dealership it is highly unlikely that it has zero mile on the odometer. I'm a tech Kia & have friends at Honda dealerships, when the cars go through the PDI process the tech driving them isn't really worried about proper "break-in", the PDI at Kia requires we drive them for 6 miles & have to make sure all systems work, i.e.. brakes, cruise, overall engine performance, transmissions etc... in short the cars are driven hard.

 

I bought my FIT on 9/25/07. It is a 2008 sport with automatic tranny. I left Buffalo New York with 300 miles on the odometer headed for Bandera (near San Antonio Texas. At about Columbus Ohio, I turned 600 miles and lowered the hammer. When I arrived back in Buffalo, I had 4,652 miles on the little car. I do not buy a car to baby around and a lot of those miles were at 80 miles an hour using the cruise control. My mileage is 5,800 as I type this. My oil meter is at 40%. The little engine ourrs like a kitten and the drive train is tight as can be. My gas mileage for the trip was 34.6 average as I recorded my MPG religiously. This is my 8th or 9th Honda I have bought new.
"THESE ARE THE MOST AMAZING CARS ON THE PLANET". Do not baby these machines. Just do 1 thing very routinely and change their oil as recommended. I have been running Mobil one in all my cars since 1978 and have never had an oil related failure.
I will be retiring in 4 years and I demand that this car last me till I die and danmed if it probably will.

 

Suprisingly I have found that the best method of breaking in any new piston engine is to rev the engine under load and decelerate under load to break in the piston rings, the first several hundred miles are quite critical and the first 50 to 100 miles are even more important. The purpose of essentially running the engine hard when new is pretty simple, you want to make sure the piston ring to cylinder wall seal is well seated, you want to vary engine RPM vigorously and it will not hurt the engine to rev it up to red line eventhough it is mostly not necessary as the L15A runs out of steam around 6,000 RPM, another thing you need to remember is not to lug the engine especially when it is new, you want to allow the engine to feel like it is breathing easy even when cruising at city speeds, and always remember to allow the engine to warm up fully before reving too high or under a lot of load as this is true with any engine it is more critical when beaking in a new engine. You want to remember that if you baby and lug it when new it is actually bad for it, it will cause cylinder wall glazing and not allow the piston rings to seat properly, when piston rings do not seat properly the pistons do not radiate heat out as effectively to the cylinder walls also you will have less power, higher amount of oil loss and more oil contamination from combustion byproducts and more gas getting in your oil between changes. I feel that engine break in is a pretty controversal topic, there are so many beliefs out there and many have merit while others do not or are questionable, it was hard for me to learn to not baby an engine when new, and after I started this method I noticed differences especially with my oil changes, I noticed that the oil would take longer to get dirty looking and get a darker color, and the biggest difference is noticed when tearing down an engine and looking at the cylinder walls, if broken in properly cylinder walls will look in many cases virtually not worn compared to that of an engine that has not been broken in properly.

 

My friend got her fit 3 weeks ago. shes taken it to redline almost every other day because she says it has no power =P guess there was no break-in period for her. hah

 

hahahah. now that's a woman that knows what she wants (in the most non-sexist way).

 

Lots of people think that recommendations are set because they want you taking it easy with the car when you first get it. Typically, people are prone to accidents in new cars until they have gotten used to them. I’ve "broken in hard" every single car I have ever owned without any added trouble what so ever to the car or engine. I was dragging my first S2000 at 600 miles.

September 1999 about 1 week after the first S2000 hit the shores in the USA (I paid $5000 over MSRP to get into it, probably one of the first 10 in the hands of US drivers).

 

As one who has built more than 800 engines for competition and used dynos to check the engines after break-in I can attest to:
1. engines broken in carefully, as in the Fit owner manuals, to varying engine speeds and rev ranges always outperform the break-em-in at wide open throttle. The rapid fire break-in almost always damages ring edges and scores the cylinder walls. True the 'scratches' and 'chips' are smaller than the eye can easily see. The rapid break-in may show better power but not economy on the first dyno run but every subsequent run they fall further and further behind.
2. Breaking in an engine at a constant speed doesn't work either as there will be a tiny ridge at the upper cylinder travel which when that rpm is exceeded the cylinder travels a little farther up, thanks to metal stretch, and the rings take a beating, damaging their sealing properties and also micro scoring the wall.
3. As a side note we have found changing from good paraffin-based motor oil to Mobil 1 synthetic (sorry, have checked any others) and changing the original oil filter at 1000-1500 miles results in better hp on the dyno and better economy. And longer life.
Note that the differences noted here are usually in the 2 to 5% range of improvements and microscope examination of metallic surfaces as well as metallic contamination of oil removed.
PS why would we build and break-in an engine this morning knowing slower and more careful is better? We finish an engine this morning to race this afternoon. Racing makes strange bedfellows.

 

I agree with mahout. Thats exactly how i broke in my 2001 Honda CRV engine. The salesman at the dealer back in 2001 said the same thing they say now about NOT changing the oil until some were about 7k miles because of special break in oil. I didnt beleive that at all. I changed mine at about 1500 miles. Didnt switch to mobil 1 until about 8k miles. Now have 82k miles on CRV. Doesnt use a drop of oil between oil changes, average 23 mpg.
Now i pick up my Fit this tuesday, going to do the same thing again.
I also used to build hi performance chevy big blocks (not full race but street/strip). The first 500 miles is were most of the break in occurs, little metal particles in oil after 500 miles.

 

You are exactly right and that is how I break-in my new cars, including this one. Its one to grown on. Most people either don't have the knowledge or are too timid to do it correctly. Luckily Honda builds such excellent motors that the cars will still run forever anyway but the window of opportunity for the best possible piston ring break-in is a narrow one.

My first post here. Just got my Fit about 5 days ago, it's got about 325 miles on it now. Glad to be here

 

[quote=vtec just kicked in yo;319547]You are exactly right and that is how I break-in my new cars, including this one. Its one to grown on. Most people either don't have the knowledge or are too timid to do it correctly. Luckily Honda builds such excellent motors that the cars will still run forever anyway but the window of opportunity for the best possible piston ring break-in is a narrow one.

There is a whole lot of microscopic examination of rings and cylinder walls that oppose your statement. They are backed by dyno results.
One of the most famous stories about Bunkie Knudsen (later one of GM's more famous presidents) in Detroit involves his first assignment at GM. It was one of those 'left-handed monkey wrench' type: find out why this group of engines failed. They appeared to be just like the rest of the engines. He found that the engines all failed as a result of hard labor on oil not yet broken in (yes, there is a breakin period for hydrocarbon oils as the chains get separated into the 'right' collection of various chain lengths) and thereafter new cars were stated to need a breakin not very different from today's recommendation or oil with 500 miles 'use' from a breakin engine was used in new cars. Later oils were compounded that way.
Not all engines broken in quickly fail; like betting on the gunman in a knife fight its just prudent.
Lubrication and metals technology has improved considerably since then with synthetic oils and chromium but the breakin period is still honored for its best method. Because synthetic lubricants don't allow much wear on rings that is the reason for using good hydrocarbon oils during breakin, or about 1000 miles to wear the ring edges in nice and smooth.. The corners of the rings have to wear nice and rounded or tapered to hold that tiny crevice of oil between the ring and cylinder walls for minimum friction. In fact it has been known that many NASCAR engines used rings that had been machined with those rounded or tapered corners (wanna start an argument with top engine builders, advocate one) to shorten breakin and improve power. Any nicks or chips in those rings cost power and chips and nicks are what you see on those engines taken to rpm limits under load right away. Sure they seem to deelop good power right away but subsequent testing shows they fall off more and untimately have the first ring failures.
Sochiro Honda got his company started making piston rings and if Honda recommends breakin in the old proven way you can bet that's the way it ought to be done.
cheers.

 

Let me clarify, I don't go anywhere near redline when I am breaking an engine in. What I do is vary RPM's and decelerate under load (engine braking) I don't accelerate hard, what I do is let the RPM's get up to about 70-75% long enough to generate some heat.

I don't baby the engine and putter around almost lugging the motor (thats about the worst thing you can do)

Honda's suggested break-in procedure is just meant to keep idiots from redlining the engine in every gear and driving like a maniac. Its NO different from any other manufacturers break-in suggestions.

In other words, they are just telling you what NOT to do. The average person really doesn't want more specific directions than that and doesn't want to bother doing a little extra work in the first 50 miles or so to ensure the best possible wear-in for the rings.

 

Engine break in is simple.

Within the first 1000 miles you should practice moderation. As the saying goes, nothings bad in moderation. You should pit the engine throw a whole set of load and balance. Rev it high every once in a while. The thing you DONT want to do is slap the thing in cruise control at the same speed for 1000 miles. Typically contemporary car computers will program themselves in the first 1000 miles for the driver (which can be reset by pulling power every so often). You also just don’t want to sit there and bounce of your rev limited every acceleration, but doing it on occasion in moderation is a good thing. The simple fact is that the engine in this Fit is probably good for 250,000 miles and as long as you change oil, you shouldn’t have any problems no matter how you break it in.

My 87 CRX had 190K miles on it and the engine was flawless even after I beat the crud out of it so hard that I kept burning out clutch’s.

 

I'm not sure why people are arguing against redlining or abusing a brand new engine. That's a bit of a straw man isn't it?

I don't think anyone was proposing that.

The fact is babying the engine, especially with a manual transmission (lugging) it when its new is NOT good. I think thats all we are saying. If you want to go the extra step and use the "motoman method" there is sound evidence to support it is a sensible way to wear-in the piston rings properly in the first 20-30 miles and it really does not in anyway contradict the OEM recommendations directly.

 

You cannot break-in piston rings in 50 miles. It takes a good 1000 miles of friction. Its not like taking a file to them. And it is good practice to use a full range of rpm from somewhat more than 'lugging' to redline, just not under hard load. You want the cylinder walls to be smooth over the entire range of piston travel; yes, the piston doesn't travel as far up and down at lower rpm as it does at redline. Has to do with the increase in the enormous forces that occur when the rpm rises. Stopping that piston stretches the rotating assmbly just enough to be different and if a ridge is there there is impact on the rings. Not good.
Honda didn't write that break-in bit in the owner's manual for nothing.

 

It doesn't really sound like we disagree, mahout.

Honda doesn't really say to do any of the things you mentioned either though. All they do is give basic guidelines, tell you to go easy on the brakes and don't gun the engine. I think we are all in agreement more or less. I'm not disagreeing with Honda's suggestions at all. Like you, I am just elaborating on them.

 

I could possibly have used cruise control for one of the Fits. The first Fit will be a town car and the other will do more highway mileage. So far, however, I haven't missed cruise control one bit. So we found the base model to suit us fine. As an aside, we decided the second Fit should be another 2008.

 

Just picked up my AT Sport last night. Everything is touchy, touchy, touchy. The breaks feel like they run by telepathy, they are so sensitive.

But, I will drive my little Fit pretty gently for about the first 1000 miles, then let her get all settled in. Nothing too dramatic for the first 1000, though.

I asked the tech last night about "break-in miles" and he looked at me like I had three heads. He said, "It's all set to go, just drive it!" :-)

 

well i think i broke in my motor correcly i drove very nice for 1500 miles before driving at high rpms . im at 3k now but what u guys think i know the manual says 600 miles but i dont know this is my first time witha new car. but i doubt that my car is broken in wrong.

 

Some people drive easy on their car for the lifetime of the vehicle - my parents being a good example. They pretty much never floor the car and all of their cars rarely ever see anything over 4K rpm (maybe 5 times in the 10 years they own the car). SO you definately havent broken in wrong considering my parents always drive easy and their cars last beyond a decade (usually sell or donate in full working condition).

I on the other hand like to drive harder and will floor it if i so please. I havent really treated the car in any special way since we bought it and now im 1200mi in and it feels just fine. Although the transmission could be smoother from 1st to 2nd. It's probably normal though.

 

okay just checking i took my car to red line not that long ago but my car seem perfectly fine. but im just worried. but now i know how it is im just driving smooth from now on.