When I bought my car it did not have an owners manuel, so I had to ask the dealer, as well as other dealers in the area how I should break the car in. All of the the dealers mechanics told me to break my car in however I was going to drive it every day. So a couple of times I drove it close to red line (in v-tech range). I finaly got an owners manual and found out that I was not supposed to go past 5500 for the first 600 miles. How screwed am I?
Thanks in advance to all those who reply
Mark DiGrappa

I'm sure many will say you've done true evil to your motor, but with modern engines, assembly methods and lubricants, I think break-in is much less of an issue.

Engines are usually taken well past 6,000 on a test stand before they are even installed in your car, and the most important item from what I've read is to vary rpm's as much as possible during break in.

So don't worry about your pre-break-in red-line excursions. It's under warranty anyway :0

Well, I wouldn't count on the warranty thing - I've found honda less than honorable if you have serious problems with the car.

As for the break in, don't worry. If you ask 10 mechanics how to do it, you'll get 10 different answers. Generally, it goes something like this: keep the rpms down, but vary them a lot. After a few miles, give it full throttle up to a little higher rpms (but not redline or even near it). Another 50 or so miles later, do that again, but a little higher. And so on and so on for the first 500 or so miles. Then run it up to redline once. After that, just go easy on it for another few hundred miles with a hard run thrown into the mix every so often. Like I said, everyone will give you a different answer, but most people will agree that something along these lines this is at least an acceptable way to do it (although their way would be better :) ).

The main problem you may encounter is with improper seating of the skirt rings (i.e. oil). You may burn a little more but this will subside after a while. My experience has been that if rings do not seat during breakin they will in the next 1-2K miles. Keep a close eye on your oil. This is the only problem you might see.

When I ordered my Mugen thermostat and radiator cap for my new short block F20C, I asked Scott at King MotorSport about break in.

His advice was MORE conservative than the manual, if I heard him correctly. Keep it below 5,000 rpm until 500 miles, then up to 5,500 rpm until you reach 600 miles, below 7,000 rpm until 700 miles, below 8,000 until 800 miles, below 9,000 rpm until 900-1000 miles. If I heard him correctly, he said stick with Redline brand mineral oil and change it at 500 and 1000 miles.

Nobody can give me an answer as to why my F20C's #4 cylinder failed at mile 650. My first short block's break in was pretty much by the book. The failure probably could not have been prevented no matter what kind of conservative break in, but my new engine is getting a very conservative break in. I've not exceeed 5,000 rpm so far, and I'm keeping the gear box in 5th and 6th quite a bit at highway speeds.

Barry in Wyoming