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To break in my TL-S or not to break it in...

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Old 11-14-2006, 09:46 PM
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To break in my TL-S or not to break it in...

I got my TL-S five days ago and i have been hearing different opinions from a lot of people about breaking in my car. Some people say that nowadays engines come already broken in. Others say that if you drive your car hard from day one you will dyno higher than the same car that was babied. Theres a couple of people that told me that i should at least go 2000 miles before flooring my car.
Whats the real story here? I only have 200 miles on my TL-S and im really tempted to open her up but dont wanna hurt the engine in the long run.
Old 11-14-2006, 09:49 PM
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i picked up my 06 tl today and the salesman said i can go past 60, but told me that i should keep it under 4000rpms for the first 500miles.
Old 11-14-2006, 09:55 PM
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post pics first
Old 11-14-2006, 10:00 PM
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When i got my 06 in August i checked the book and it said before 600 miles you shouldnt go at a constant speed for long durations and don't accerate too rapidly. Also easy on the brakes for the first 200 miles, which you've past. But thats for anyone before that.
Old 11-14-2006, 10:04 PM
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Drive it like you would normally, all the engine really needs to do is have it's 'rings' set properly. that only takes about 10 minutes of idle. so dont baby it.
Old 11-14-2006, 10:11 PM
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drive it like you are going to drive it. if you are an agressive driver, then be one when the car is new.
Old 11-14-2006, 10:31 PM
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Originally Posted by ubnpast
drive it like you are going to drive it. if you are an agressive driver, then be one when the car is new.
I dunno about all that ... Im an agressive driver but your piston rings need to seal. I dont suggest going past 3800/400 RPM's. If you bought the car its one thing but if its a lease then its a different story.
Old 11-14-2006, 10:39 PM
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Per the Acura Owner's Link:

What is the break-in period of my Acura?

Help assure your vehicle's future reliability and performance by paying extra attention to how you drive during the first 600 miles (1,000 kilometers). During this period:

Avoid full-throttle starts and rapid acceleration.
Avoid hard braking. New brakes need to be broken in by moderate use for the first 200 miles (300 km).
Old 11-14-2006, 10:40 PM
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the usualy way to break in is make sure you don't stay at a constant RPM.... so if u have to go highway... change gears every so often...
don't baby it.. or else seal will be messed..
Old 11-14-2006, 10:56 PM
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As soon as I hit 600 on mu 2006, I drove it so hard I thought it was gonna cry.

And I loved every minute of it!

To tell you the truth, the difference in performance after the first 600-1000 miles was remarkable. There really WAS a noticable difference in the way the car drove. (i.e. it was much better.)

Enjoy!
Old 11-14-2006, 11:51 PM
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Originally Posted by pnoi521
When i got my 06 in August i checked the book and it said before 600 miles you shouldnt go at a constant speed for long durations and don't accerate too rapidly. Also easy on the brakes for the first 200 miles, which you've past. But thats for anyone before that.
I was planning to go to San Diego this weekend and thats a long highway drive. Should i wait till after 600 miles? On the highway the RPMs wont move much at a constant speed.
Old 11-15-2006, 12:18 AM
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Go to SD just dont use cruise control, and make a point to vary your speed as you drive
Old 11-15-2006, 12:53 AM
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I dont get why you cant drive at the same speed for a long time. Is it proven to hurt your car in any way if you drive at a constant speed in a new car? I remember driving 400 highway miles on my brand new CL the day after i got it and cruise controled almost all the way there.
Old 11-15-2006, 12:55 AM
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I just did a 150mile drive in my new Type-S (pre-600 miles),

i kinda forgot about the varying the speed thing.................but seeing cop after cop helped me vary them quite a bit

I broke 600 miles a couple days but still haven't really floored it. I have driven rather aggressively and fast during the break-in period but i tried to avoid very high speeds and pushing it to the redline. I hear you have to get it past 100 pretty soon around the break-in if you want to hit those speeds easier in the future.
Old 11-15-2006, 01:13 AM
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Originally Posted by juruki
I was planning to go to San Diego this weekend and thats a long highway drive. Should i wait till after 600 miles? On the highway the RPMs wont move much at a constant speed.

Ummm when my car had 200 miles i took a short drive from Vegas to Cali and what i did was i just fluctated the speed. like 70-80-70-65 etc... with no cruise control
Old 11-15-2006, 02:35 AM
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you should def vary your speed in a new car. dont floor it. if you need to make the trip in the new tl then make a good amount of pit stops. enjoy the trip. take a detour. go see some things off the freeway. you should always vary your speed in a new car. that is the most important thing. second most important is to not drive it hard the first 500 miles or so. its not just the engine you have to worry about settling in. its other things as well. let those other things stretch out a bit before you open it up. let it get used to flexing here and there.

it's really important.
Old 11-15-2006, 04:09 AM
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i wouldn't worry about the learning curve for your TL. after the break in point, just unplug the battery and let the ECU reset. when you start up, it'll start a new learning curve.
Old 11-15-2006, 05:39 AM
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The FIRST thing you should do is read your manual !
I think Acura knows a thing or two about how to break in your engine, and they even put it in writing for you.
Old 11-15-2006, 10:13 AM
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Originally Posted by Perziankabob
i wouldn't worry about the learning curve for your TL. after the break in point, just unplug the battery and let the ECU reset. when you start up, it'll start a new learning curve.
How long this it take the ECU to adapt to a different driver?
Old 11-15-2006, 11:58 AM
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Here's a little background on what I have learned about breaking in engines. First of all though if you've already got a couple of hundred miles on the car then you've missed the opportunity for the "aggressive" break-in procedure. I would follow the book from this point forward.

I'll do my best to try and quickly describe the aggressive break-in principal and why some people believe that it's the best way to go.

Seating the piston rings is vitally important in a new engine. The cylinders ability to build and hold compression is not accomplished by the piston rings spring force, which isn't very much anyway, but by the compression itself. The pressure on top of the piston gets behind the rings (between the ring and the piston groove) and forces the ring against the cylinder walls. The more area that the ring has against the cylinder the better, right?
The break-in period is for the rings to develop this wear pattern against the cylinder wall. The optimal time to do this is when the cyliner wall itself is fairly new and somewhat abrasive from honing. Once the cyliner wall has developed a smooth finish it's ability to wear the rings down is diminished. The bottom line here is that you want the rings to wear down as much as possible in the shortest amount of time and to do that you run the engine aggressively while it is still new. Once the engine has a few hundred miles on it the window for accomplishing this is over.
This debate about this method, as well as some others, will go on until the end of time as there are proponents for and against them. One of the trade-offs to doing this used to be that the bearings were not being given the opportunity to break themselves in properly. Today's engines are built with tolerances that were unheard of years ago. The bearings in these engines don't really require a break in period. There's no room for much play. That's one of the reasons for the 5W - 30 oil recommendation. That stuff pours almost like water when it's warmed up.

Now for the reality of it all.

I personally don't believe we even have the choice to break in the engine aggressively. If that method is going to be used then it has to be done immediately upon engine startup. Once our cars are built and go through the quality analysis / checklist procedure, or whatever it is they do, then get shipped to the distribution center, then delivered to the dealership, the window for doing this is over. That's probably why the "take it easy for the first XXX miles" method is still being recommended.

My
Old 11-15-2006, 01:44 PM
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Originally Posted by Shalooby
Here's a little background on what I have learned about breaking in engines. First of all though if you've already got a couple of hundred miles on the car then you've missed the opportunity for the "aggressive" break-in procedure. I would follow the book from this point forward.

I'll do my best to try and quickly describe the aggressive break-in principal and why some people believe that it's the best way to go.

Seating the piston rings is vitally important in a new engine. The cylinders ability to build and hold compression is not accomplished by the piston rings spring force, which isn't very much anyway, but by the compression itself. The pressure on top of the piston gets behind the rings (between the ring and the piston groove) and forces the ring against the cylinder walls. The more area that the ring has against the cylinder the better, right?
The break-in period is for the rings to develop this wear pattern against the cylinder wall. The optimal time to do this is when the cyliner wall itself is fairly new and somewhat abrasive from honing. Once the cyliner wall has developed a smooth finish it's ability to wear the rings down is diminished. The bottom line here is that you want the rings to wear down as much as possible in the shortest amount of time and to do that you run the engine aggressively while it is still new. Once the engine has a few hundred miles on it the window for accomplishing this is over.
This debate about this method, as well as some others, will go on until the end of time as there are proponents for and against them. One of the trade-offs to doing this used to be that the bearings were not being given the opportunity to break themselves in properly. Today's engines are built with tolerances that were unheard of years ago. The bearings in these engines don't really require a break in period. There's no room for much play. That's one of the reasons for the 5W - 30 oil recommendation. That stuff pours almost like water when it's warmed up.

Now for the reality of it all.

I personally don't believe we even have the choice to break in the engine aggressively. If that method is going to be used then it has to be done immediately upon engine startup. Once our cars are built and go through the quality analysis / checklist procedure, or whatever it is they do, then get shipped to the distribution center, then delivered to the dealership, the window for doing this is over. That's probably why the "take it easy for the first XXX miles" method is still being recommended.

My
AMEN SHALOOBY!!!!

I agree 100%.

By bearings I assume you mean crankshaft or main bearings. Correct... they don't require break-in for this reason... The bearing and crankshaft surfaces never ever touch one another. The tight bearing clearances create a "liquid bearing" with the crankshaft literally floating on oil.

One of the biggest proponents of the hard break-in process is a guy that calls himself MotoMan. There are the believers and the rest. The methodology makes sense to me and I've used his break-in method with no problems on my last 5 motorcycles. They've always run strong and never smoke or burn oil.

Here's a link to his site if any are interested. While his methodology is pointed towards motorcycle engines... the same applies to any modern overhead cam engine.

http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm

ps... I broke mine in using his method... I had 6 miles on the car when I picked it up.
Old 11-15-2006, 07:30 PM
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One more thought on the break-in period.

The method I described above is simply for the engine. There is much more to our cars that need to be "broken in" than just the engine. Rubber parts mating to metal surfaces, springs, bushings, etc. that move around a bit as the car travels over the road. The car should not necessarily be babied but rather treated as the fine combination of components that it is during the first six hundred miles or so. It's recommended that we not perform jack-rabbit starts and aggressive driving not because the engine can't handle it, which it can, but because they don't want the rest of the car to be subjected to the forces that go along with that. Remember, we are breaking in the whole car, not just the engine.
Thats also the reason they put a mileage limit on the break-in period and not the indicator that is normaly used for determining how long a component has been in service. That indicator would be a Hobbs meter and it measures hours of operation as opposed to distance traveled. The two are mutually exclusive.

I guess that's now.
Old 11-16-2006, 03:56 PM
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Originally Posted by juruki
I got my TL-S five days ago and i have been hearing different opinions from a lot of people about breaking in my car.
Okay the key word here is MY. I always hear "drive it like it was stolen". How about "drive like I'm paying for it." No one here can tell you if reliability will be affected or not, is this a silly move for such a brief amount of time? Probably. Be patient and chill and when the time comes do the WOT thing. It will be worth the wait. Enjoy!
Old 11-17-2006, 09:47 AM
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Drive it like u stole it.... The harder u break it in the harder it runs... Its a proven fact with motorcycles, cars, everthing.......
Old 11-17-2006, 12:27 PM
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Originally Posted by Slammed_JDM
Drive it like u stole it.... The harder u break it in the harder it runs... Its a proven fact with motorcycles, cars, everthing.......
^^^^^^ the only proven fact is that people with little experience in these matters should refrain from providing questionable advice.
Old 11-17-2006, 07:46 PM
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Originally Posted by Slammed_JDM
Drive it like u stole it.... The harder u break it in the harder it runs... Its a proven fact with motorcycles, cars, everthing.......
uhm, sure fish.
Old 11-18-2006, 07:35 AM
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Well written, these days engine breakin in more a precaution than for properly setting up the metal to metal interfaces in engine. I rebuilt my 20 year old motorcycle engine a few years ago and was amazed to see the cylinder bore crosshatch pattern clearly with no wear ridge what so ever. CNC machining, improvements in metalurgy, surface finishing and hardening have dramatically reduced breakin period as mentioned. The tolerances on the bearing surfaces these days is really tightly controlled, and the finishing processes used on parts.

A friend's neighbor was in senior management at GM and worked his way up from designing engines as a mechanical engineer. He told us one of the main reasons for reduction of breakin period on engines was for rental and fleet vehicles sales. People who rent typically do not follow any breakin suggestions when driving off rental car, same goes for fleet vehicles drivers switch vehicles all the time and do not follow. Since auto makers do not want to pay/deal with engine warrenty they worked to minimize breakin with tighter control of tolerances and finishes on components

Some proof to this was a few years ago Ford gave a major quality award to their piston ring supplier for the Tauras 3.0/3.8L V6 engines. This supplier delivered something like 20 million ping rings for the Tauras with no engine failures or warrenty repairs for piston ring related problems. Pretty amazing quality control, too bad the Tauras 4AT transmission didn't have that level of quality.

The last engine I can truely say that breakin made a driveable/noticable difference on was rebuilting a small block 350 Chevy with a friend for his 71 Monte Carlo. In my immediate family we've purchased 4 Acura/Honda's since 2000, can't say any of the engines felt different at 1K miles versus 10 miles.

Originally Posted by Shalooby
Here's a little background on what I have learned about breaking in engines. First of all though if you've already got a couple of hundred miles on the car then you've missed the opportunity for the "aggressive" break-in procedure. I would follow the book from this point forward.

I'll do my best to try and quickly describe the aggressive break-in principal and why some people believe that it's the best way to go.

Seating the piston rings is vitally important in a new engine. The cylinders ability to build and hold compression is not accomplished by the piston rings spring force, which isn't very much anyway, but by the compression itself. The pressure on top of the piston gets behind the rings (between the ring and the piston groove) and forces the ring against the cylinder walls. The more area that the ring has against the cylinder the better, right?
The break-in period is for the rings to develop this wear pattern against the cylinder wall. The optimal time to do this is when the cyliner wall itself is fairly new and somewhat abrasive from honing. Once the cyliner wall has developed a smooth finish it's ability to wear the rings down is diminished. The bottom line here is that you want the rings to wear down as much as possible in the shortest amount of time and to do that you run the engine aggressively while it is still new. Once the engine has a few hundred miles on it the window for accomplishing this is over.
This debate about this method, as well as some others, will go on until the end of time as there are proponents for and against them. One of the trade-offs to doing this used to be that the bearings were not being given the opportunity to break themselves in properly. Today's engines are built with tolerances that were unheard of years ago. The bearings in these engines don't really require a break in period. There's no room for much play. That's one of the reasons for the 5W - 30 oil recommendation. That stuff pours almost like water when it's warmed up.

Now for the reality of it all.

I personally don't believe we even have the choice to break in the engine aggressively. If that method is going to be used then it has to be done immediately upon engine startup. Once our cars are built and go through the quality analysis / checklist procedure, or whatever it is they do, then get shipped to the distribution center, then delivered to the dealership, the window for doing this is over. That's probably why the "take it easy for the first XXX miles" method is still being recommended.

My
Old 11-18-2006, 07:37 AM
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Must proof read, must proof read...

"20 million piston rings"
Old 11-19-2006, 03:39 PM
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Well, since we are proofreading...

It's warranty not warrenty riight?
Old 11-19-2006, 11:27 PM
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Originally Posted by pnoi521
Well, since we are proofreading...

It's warranty not warrenty riight?
Are we indeed proofreading?............because then it is right, not riight!
Old 11-20-2006, 01:05 AM
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Originally Posted by pohljm
Are we indeed proofreading?............because then it is right, not riight!
Lol! Good point. But i put two Is becuase i was stretching the word. Like riiiiight. I wasn't trying to be rude. i just thought that i should point out that its warranty.
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