I just got my last oil report for the break in of my forged engine. I used Redline assembly lube when putting the motor together, my break-in process was using AMSOIL 30w break in oil, I did the first change after seating the rings using FM's ring seating procedure, then filled it up again with the same break in oil and drove 25 miles in the city, then filled it with generic conventional 5w-40, drove about 150ish miles mostly city with about 1/3 of that mileage being highway, then changed the oil again and drove about 1500 miles that was 2/3 city miles and 1/3 highway miles. I never drove it very hard, 50% throttle at most, never revved it past 4500rpm I always let it warm up for at least 5 minutes before i drove it, and I changed the filter every time I changed the oil. This is the oil report from the 1500 mile interval, it looks pretty good and Blackstone says that its fine, I'm mostly just worried that this might be a smidge too much bearing material (I used ACL race bearing) after this many miles and oil changes. Is everything good so I can start boosting it, or should I wait a bit longer to make sure its fine before I do anything else?

 

First off, probably not a huge deal but that file has your name, address, phone number, email and client ID on it. Might want to redact that.

I made a similar post after building my engine, and I've seen other's on here as well with similar concerns. I think everyone gets nervous for those first ~100-1000 miles. If you've got 1500 miles on it and it's not knocking I doubt it's going to start any time soon. I think the usual advice in this case would be to cut open an oil filter and see if there are big chunks of bearing material.

If it's clean you probably don't have anything to worry about. I'd say beat the hell out of it at this point.

My $0.02. I've only built one engine, so take it with a grain of salt. Congrats on making it to 1500 miles if nothing else

 

I'm with SimBa, after 1500 miles I'd be boosting it hard! That's plenty of break-in time.

I personally didn't even look at the oil that came out after break-in on my built motor. Ignorance is bliss baby. 25k miles later still going strong, lots of boosted track miles.

 

If it were knocking, it should be super loud right? Because it’s making some noise lower in the engine bay, but it’s very quiet, and I only started hearing it after I swapped too the gates blue belt last week which from I’ve heard from other people makes a lot more noise than the regular timing belts… doubly so because I’m not running a timing cover. Even then I have to take off the undertray, then get on the ground and put my ear only a few inches away from the engine to hear it. I’m 90% sure I’m jumping at shadows and this report kinda confirms it, I’ll put another 500 miles on it and do another oil analysis before I do anything major.

 

It would be noticeable, especially if you're paying attention to the sound of the engine. When my Subaru got rod knock it was most noticeable at idle around 3K RPM, basically you might not hear it at idle, but if you ran the engine through the rev range while stationary it would start knocking. It was pretty obvious.

I thought my engine in my Miata was knocking when I first got mine back in the car. After a bit I realized it was just that the new injectors were really clacky. If you're worried/interested in digging deeper you could grab a mechanics stethoscope or a long screw driver and listen to different parts of the engine just to see what it sounds like.

The report I got from Blackstone said I had higher levels of something related to breaking (can't remember exactly what) and that was after like 5K pretty hard miles. I wouldn't worry about it if there doesn't seem to be anything obviously wrong.

 

+1 my id1050's are super clacky. Any motor I've had develop a knock there has been no question that it's a KNOCK. And it gets worse quickly. best thing you can do is keep driving it, I think, and see if any noises get louder.

And maybe send another sample out to blackstone. now that you've done a 1,500 mile change, I would expect break in metals to be drastically less going forward.

 

I only hear it at idle and temp doesn’t seem to have an impact on how loud it is or isn’t. Even if I stand next to it with the hood open, it’s completely drowned out by my injectors, which are stock so they are pretty quiet. I’ll drive it another 500 miles, and as long as it doesn’t get worse and the next oil report says good things then it should be fine… hopefully.

 

Sounds fine to me ....
in the immortal words of MIT Prof Reed McFeely when he walked in on a bunch of grad students worriedly listening to a turbo pump they had just abused!

It would have blown up by now if it was going to due to a build error.
If anything is a problem now, you have to take it apart and rebuild it.
If it breaks you have to take it apart and rebuild it.
There is nothing you can do now prevention-wise besides take it apart and rebuild it.

So relax, and drive it like it was meant be driven. You've worked through the break in.

 

Looks like you have a good build, would of failed by now if something wasn't right, or be making a some kind of strange sound. I've got 1200miles on a forged build myself. Built it with 15w-40 syn for assembly lube because that's what I had left over from my diesel trucks oil change. I used some kind of cheap Walmart 10w-40 for the entire break in before I go synthetic . I'm old school , been building engines for many years, also jet engines for a living for the airlines which we just run on Mobil1 Syn. because of the altitude they fly at and cold temps up there. It lubes the gearboxes, and bearing for the turbines.

 

Yeah, i was 100% jumping at shadows. Got another oil report, everything looks even better, none of the noises have gotten worse, so i'm just going to say that that noise i was worried about is just regular noise from running the gates blue belt without a timing cover. Time to start beating on this thing like it owes me money.

 

I'd be pretty surprised if a specific timing belt was making an audible noise difference, is there any reason you suspect the belt? Regardless, glad to see that things are still moving as they should.

Basically the same story as myself and many others on here. It's a nerve-racking time, but if something was wrong I'm pretty confident you'd know by now. Sounds like it's time to turn it up

 

I'm blaming the timing belt for the noise because all of the sellers of the gates blue belt do mention that it is louder than the regular timing belt. I imagine it has something to do with the fact that its made out of kevlar instead of rubber like the regular ones. Even then, most of the reason for the noise is just the fact that I don't run a timing cover, the blue belt just makes the noise a bit louder. Either way i'm not worried anymore, if something was going to happen, it would have happened already.

 

Interesting, I never would have expected a belt to cause a noticeable noise, but I don't have any experience with exposed belts or kevlar ones, so I suppose TIL.