MINI-P

Soooooo, I'm about to put my car back together with a freshly re-built motor. I'm also dropping the insurance and registration and making it a track only car.

For those of you that have track only cars and have put in new motors, how and where do you break it in? What procedure do you follow? Do I just burn a track day without driving it too hard?

Sorry if this has been covered in depth elsewhere. I did a search and didn't see anything. But I could have used the wrong set of words to search with.

Seefo

iTrader: (5)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/porsc...nly-motor.html

I know its not miata specific.

some more:
http://forums.rennlist.com/rennforum...you-do-it.html

I think most places usually do the initial break-in for you on a dyno. The important part is first running of the engine.

Bond

iTrader: (6)

Sealing the rings requires load, you have to drive it (dyno,or track) to do it properly. Just slowly increase load (1/4 throttle increments maybe 4-5 times each) until you're at WOT.

Trying to do it stationary will not seal the rings.

MINI-P

Thanks. It seems there is still quite a lot of debate about what is proper break-in and what is not.

I did find this thread. Some good info here:

https://www.miataturbo.net/showthrea...t=engine+break

But, I'd still like to get the track guys opinions on the subject if you got time. Not that there's anything wrong with non-track guys and gals opinions or anything.

Savington

iTrader: (31)

You can do it at the track - just run the super-beginner group. Or, rent a dyno for a couple of hours and do it on the dyno.

I've also towed race cars out into the boonies, unloaded them, and driven them around on remote backroads to break in motors.

miata2fast

iTrader: (2)

You renegade you!

mx594m

iTrader: (1)

I followed the instruction from the Fly'ng Miata site

http://www.flyinmiata.com/tech/breakin.php

Everyone has their own idea of how to break in an engine based on what their father told them, manufacturer suggestions, half-remembered lore and best guesses. Our break in procedure was developed from talking to other engine builders, piston and ring manufacturers. It works quite well in our experience.

All engines are shipped dry. Double check the oil drain plug, install a new quality oil filter and fill the engine with approximately four quarts of straight 30 wt detergent oil. We recommend a change of oil and filter after 25-50 miles, again using straight 30 wt. If you plan to switch to synthetic oil, please wait for at least 1,000 miles.
Use all new coolant lines and clamps to avoid leaks.
Mix anti-freeze and water at the minimum concentration to get the freeze protection that you require. Water transfers heat much better than anti-freeze. Not a bad idea to check or replace the radiator cap while you’re at it, as most of the ones we test fail a pressure test miserably. Jacking the nose of the car up while filling with coolant ensures that the fill point is the high point of the system.
Make sure you have all your ground wires hooked up! Missing grounds can make smoke come out of expensive places.
Have your timing light already hooked up before starting the engine and have an assistant watch for leaks while you start the engine for the first time. We pack the oil pump with engine lube, so oil pressure should come up very quickly. Start the car, watch for oil pressure while your assistant looks for leaks of any kind. Fuel leaks can be especially unpleasant.
Once you have verified oil pressure and no leaks (or fixed any leaks), set your ignition timing while the car is warming up.
Do not let the car sit and idle for a long time. Once you’ve got timing set, no leaks and everything sounds and looks good, take the car out on the road.
Keep in mind that there really shouldn’t be any metal to metal contact happening within your engine, other than the rings to the cylinder walls. The rings are the ONLY things we are interested in breaking in or seating. What seats rings is cylinder pressure. Rings and pistons are designed so that cylinder pressure sneaks behind the compression rings and forces them out against the newly honed cylinder wall. Why do I mention this? Because I want you to take your warmed up car out on the road, find a nice straight stretch and do a couple of heavy throttle runs in third or fourth gear from about 2500-5500 rpm. Each time you hit 5500-6000 rpm, snap your foot off the gas and let the car coast down to 2500 rpm while in gear, to pull high vacuum in the cylinders. Repeat this step about five times and you should have a nicely mated set of rings and cylinders. NOTE: When I say “heavy throttle”, I am referring to a normally aspirated engine. For a turbo or supercharged car, modulate the throttle to achieve about zero on your boost gauge, rather than full throttle. This would be roughly equivalent to full throttle in a normally aspirated car.
Take it home, recheck for leaks, make sure fans work, etc and then change the oil.
Once you have done the ring seating, try to control yourself (or at least your right foot) for a few hundred miles, no full throttle, try to vary rpm on the highway and no revving to the limiter.
That’s it! Have fun!

ILoveOffRamps

iTrader: (2)

Was going to do this and FM told me it was overkill. To just take it out onto the street and do it that way. I liked the idea of not being surrounded by traffic personally.... Try breaking in an engine on a so-so tune, new 949 clutch, while it traffic. And apparently a 99% collapsed cat. Kinda hectic. Somewhere in there is a you're doing it wrong picture.

Seefo

iTrader: (5)

sounds like you are doing it wrong if your cat is clogged.

Plenty of back roads around here to break a car in. I was reading online, apparently you can get a 3 week registration in some places with a license and a title. See if that's an available option at your DMV.

MINI-P

This is hard to do in a track only car. That's why I was asking the question of how to do it at the track. Is this "few hundred miles" REALLY necessary? Or is it part of the folklore from days of yore? 200 miles would be 74.0740741 laps of ECR.

I'm not sure if you can do this in the Great Republic of Texas. They are pretty strict when it comes to what may drive on their roads. My registration and inspection sticker have just expired and I don't really want to pay to get them renewed on a car that isn't going to see any street time. And I'd like to drop the insurance to save some cash as well. I live on the outskirts of civilization and could just head out on the road late at night. But there's always the chance of getting busted. Small town cops would love to bust a guy out "driving funny" in a "race car". I think I'll burn up a member day on a Thursday at ECR when I'm the only car there.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

+1
The only thing I'll add is that most cylinder walls come burnished to help rings seal.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

Drive it around the neighborhood to get a couple "heat cycles" on the car on the cheapest oil you can buy. Then, do a few laps without the super-charger belt at the track, change the oil, cut the filter. Go *****-out on the second session, with boost and the rest of the day on cheap Rotella. On my car I did this kind of break in and have essentially have zero blow-by/oil vapor in my catch can.

yank

iTrader: (1)

Im pretty sure this means im screwed then.

**Thread jack**

What would you do in my situation?

1) Ive got a freshly rebuilt engine that needs break in.
2) ms3x currently without a tune so if i get one its probably going to run like **** for a while till i get it straitened out.
3) my turbo requires 3 warm-up sessions at idle to operating temp before spooling the turbo.

falcon

iTrader: (13)

That's not a big deal. He means don't rev the car up and down to 5-6k with no load. Idling is fine.

yank

iTrader: (1)

so the plan then is to
1) grab a 1.8T ms2/3 tune and get the car to start.
2) sit and tune idle while turbo breaks in.
3) then take it out on the road and let VE analyze live autotune while i do the break in sequence.

will the rings not break in properly at idle? from what i understand the cross hatches in the bore left by the honing process are there to file the rings. from what I've read in the past the car needed to be under heavy vacuum for the rings to seat properly. ex. 3rd gear pull to ~5k and engine brake to 1k.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

Been there, done that. Get the car to idle nurse it through a parking-lot, and get some vacuum going. VE Analyze Live is your friend. Don't expect the engine to bust into flames if you don't do some magical break-in procedure. There are enough tuned cars here that you can get a workable VE table to get the car drivable for break-in from someone. Put 20* of spark in across the board, don't go into boost and you will nguyen at lyphe.
Yes, just get the car moving and make vacuum.

I poured some oil over the cams, sad the valve cover on the head, got the car to start, killed it to tighten the valve cover with ~5 bolts, did a rough vacuum run down the block, checked head torque, bolted the valve cover down, let the engine cool, then started tuning an hour later.

yank

iTrader: (1)

Sweet. Preciate Hustler.

spoolin2bars

iTrader: (1)

Just so you know, rep. Of Tx most certainly does offer a 30 day temporary plate. (paper lic plate) if one month of min liability insurance is gonna break the bank, you have no buisness having a track car. My track cars insurance costs $30, the temp plate costs $25. Skip the inspection, no cop will give you a ticket for that with the paper plate on the car. I know because I have used the paper plate for the last 10 years on 3 different track/daily cars. Only issue is that the dmv will only give you 3 temp plates per car per year now. I would drop insurance when I wasnt going to drive it for a while, then add it back when I needed to drive it to tune or for pleasure.

falcon

iTrader: (13)

Yeah you'll be fine. People alwasy thing of rings being these extremely fragile items but they are quite tough. Sure they will wear a tiny bit but without pulling hard vaccum and loading the engine up it won't make a difference.

Warm the motor up a few times for the turbo thing, and while you're doing this try to get your idle tuned decent. Afterwards, continue break in as normal.

I think my motor idled for a solid 30 min before i actually drove anywhere. Had to deal with a few ECU/idle/fuel req issues and seal off a few coolant leaks. An Rb26DETT motor i had a hand in building idled for at least a full hour before actually driving due to a ton of coolant leaks we had on the intake manifold. And that motor made huge power with no blow by and is still running 4 years and many track days later.

hustler

iTrader: (6)