Highway Motor Break-in?? How to properly break-in your motor if have a long drive?

[Silver TT]

PCD is the route I am leaning towards. About a 750 mile drive home for me after the pickup.

Question for you guys who have done the long drive. From my understanding you need to modulate the RPMs when breaking in a new car. Highway driving does not sound like the best place to do that kind of driving unless you want to drive like a bobble head the whole way home.

How is it advised to properly break-in your motor over a 750+ mile drive home considering this will be mostly if not all highway??

[BigHat]

Not that big of a deal. I made a few road trips to accrue miles toward break-in on all of my M cars. If the highway piece, I really wasn't up for varying speed too much, but I did up/down shift and ran at varying rpms (w/in the guidelines) for a half hour or so now and then.
If a measure of proper break-in was zero engine oil burn, it must have been okay.

You might take a look at your route and plan a couple of fun detours along the way where you'll be in at slow speeds going back and forth to the freeway. For you, Skyline Drive in VA would be ideal in the nice weather.

[devo]

Originally Posted by Silver TT

PCD is the route I am leaning towards. About a 750 mile drive home for me after the pickup.

Question for you guys who have done the long drive. From my understanding you need to modulate the RPMs when breaking in a new car. Highway driving does not sound like the best place to do that kind of driving unless you want to drive like a bobble head the whole way home.

How is it advised to properly break-in your motor over a 750+ mile drive home considering this will be mostly if not all highway??

Break in IS a big deal. Vary the rpms as well as vehicle speed constantly. Load and unload the engine, etc... Just because one's car doesn't burn oil does not mean it was broken in correctly. Long drive break ins are excellent as long as the aforementioned parameters are adhered to. No cold engine loading until > 175F for oil temp. Long cool downs before parking too.

[klammer]

i did PCD as well and drove home to chicago, but took 3 days to do it, picked up friday got home sunday, dropped off at dealer monday with over 1200 on it. went through the mountains, highway, 2 lane roads, just varied everything. If not in a rush easy to do, take your time, do it right, and enjoy

[kcdude24]

I did 450 miles in Germany and Austria, then a pcd drive home 850 miles. Great way to get your break in out of the way. Just modulate everything and no cruise control....also consider breaking up the trip in a few days with stops on the way.

[GOLFFRR]

thats a perfect way to break in your car, road trips FTW

[cmk227]

I did 950miles in Germany, Austria and Switzerland so I would recommend doing a lot of short and long trips. Just don't exceed the 105 miles or the 5500 rpm.

[OC3]

Yeah, and you might want to throw in an 'accidental' downshift or two while at 5,000 rpm so that the needle momentarily shoots to 6,500 or 7,000 rpm before being brought down w/ a quick upshift. LOL

[Wah]

I did the same trip back over the summer... i just alternated between 6th and 7th on the hwy. If you have the time, I highly recommend taking the blue ridge parkway on your way back (and the recommended route to Asheville). That is if you aren't in the middle of a snowstorm!

[Silver TT]

Thanks guys. All good suggestions. I figured I could do some extra shifting at highway speeds to change up the RPMs but that will get old pretty quickly over a 12hr drive.

I think the best solution as others have said is to mix it up with some windy mountain roads, some two lane, stop frequently and make sure to do proper warm ups and cool downs. Thats the plan for now. Thanks for the advice.

[Alex1911]

IIRC I asked the PDs when I was being shown my car at PCD what to do on the ride home.

I varied my speed the trip home, ever 15-30min I would coast down to 50/55 and then bring it up to a different speed. The PD told me to get off on exits and get back on, same with rest stops.

I had my GF get on the nav and find country roads that followed the Interstate and provided a way to get back on, we hopped on those a few times. I'd cat and mouse people on the way home.

I'm coming up on 5k and haven't burned any oil.

[JCtx]

I did 680 miles, alone, and needed to get home the same day, so no detours for me AT ALL. Hard to do much rpm variation, but due to light traffic, I was speeding up and slowing down for a while, between 70 and 90 or so. RPM difference is not dramatic, but sufficient. But the engine loading and unloading is definitely significant. I did the first service at 1,400 miles, and oil level was still at full, even though I spent a lot of the final hours on the trip circling the ton, with rpm near the limit. Not bad. And yes, adhered perfectly to break-in instructions .

[BigHat]

Originally Posted by devo

Break in IS a big deal. Vary the rpms as well as vehicle speed constantly. Load and unload the engine, etc... Just because one's car doesn't burn oil does not mean it was broken in correctly. Long drive break ins are excellent as long as the aforementioned parameters are adhered to. No cold engine loading until > 175F for oil temp. Long cool downs before parking too.

Not saying a proper break-in isn't important, I'm saying it isn't rocket science ( a big deal) to do it in an acceptable way.

So okay, since you're so well-informed what metric do you use to assess that you did a proper break-in? You dyno your car every time you break it in? Know beyond a doubt that your break-in technique made a discernible difference on ultimate power generation of your engine? Didn't think so. How many others dyno their cars and can make a connection to performance and break-in procedures? Not that I personally agree, but how many just hammer their cars from the start with no regard to the BMW guidelines? I'd say they REALLY don't think it a "big deal."

So give me a break. Yea, I may go 60 for 30 mins, 70 for 30 mins, 55 for 30 mins on a highway portion of the break-in and also vary the rpms when doing so, but I'm doubting this makes a huge difference. Personally, I prefer a mix of local around town driving (added thermal cycles) or the detours off the highway (BR Prky as I suggested) too. Don't make this into more than it really is.

By the way, 99% of the time all of these discussions of break in procedures are tied to subsequent excess oil consumption that everyone complains about. Improper break-in would result in improper ring seating etc and lead to just that. So if you aren't burning oil and the engine is operating properly, be pretty happy with your break-in.

With the thousands of cars picked up in SC and simply driven-in home on the freeway for over a 1000 miles, we'd know if this actually created a problem. Every "mouse turd" issue surfaces on these sites and this would have too.

[BMRLVR]

Originally Posted by BigHat

Not saying a proper break-in isn't important, I'm saying it isn't rocket science ( a big deal) to do it in an acceptable way.

So okay, since you're so well-informed what metric do you use to assess that you did a proper break-in? You dyno your car every time you break it in? Know beyond a doubt that your break-in technique made a discernible difference on ultimate power generation of your engine? Didn't think so. How many others dyno their cars and can make a connection to performance and break-in procedures? Not that I personally agree, but how many just hammer their cars from the start with no regard to the BMW guidelines? I'd say they REALLY don't think it a "big deal."

So give me a break. Yea, I may go 60 for 30 mins, 70 for 30 mins, 55 for 30 mins on a highway portion of the break-in and also vary the rpms when doing so, but I'm doubting this makes a huge difference. Personally, I prefer a mix of local around town driving (added thermal cycles) or the detours off the highway (BR Prky as I suggested) too. Don't make this into more than it really is.

By the way, 99% of the time all of these discussions of break in procedures are tied to subsequent excess oil consumption that everyone complains about. Improper break-in would result in improper ring seating etc and lead to just that. So if you aren't burning oil and the engine is operating properly, be pretty happy with your break-in.

With the thousands of cars picked up in SC and simply driven-in home on the freeway for over a 1000 miles, we'd know if this actually created a problem. Every "mouse turd" issue surfaces on these sites and this would have too.

+1

Break-in is not as technical as some people make it out to be.

If you have to do constant highway speeds while breaking in your engine just run ~5-10 min in 6th gear, ~5-10 min in 5th gear, ~5-10 min in 4th gear and continuously shift for the duration of your highway drive. The most critical time in the engine break-in period is the first few hours or roughly 100 miles. By that time the major amount of run in has taken place.

If these engines needed an extremely technical break-in procedure they would probably be pre run by BMW. Just think about what an engine builder does when he builds an engine....... The engine is run up to operating temperature and then they usually do multiple full load pulls on a dyno up to redline while watching all of the oil and coolant temperatures, oil pressure, and horsepower output.