Publisher's Note: Welcome to our 36th edition of Tech Tips Tuesday on "Mastering the Engine Break-In Procedure".  We'll be re-publishing an edition of AMSOIL Tech Tips for you every Tuesday.  Click on the Blog Category "Tuesday Tech Tips" to see everything published to-date.

Mastering the Engine Break-In Procedure

John Gardner: Well, you just spent over a 100 hours building your new engine. You put it inside your car, and what's the tendency? Floor it. You want to go and spin those tires and burn them up. Probably not the best idea. Welcome to this AMSOIL Tech Tip. It's all about the break-in procedure, and why do we even want to do a break-in procedure?

Well, I'm going to show you. It's a cross-hatch pattern. How do you do that? When do you want to do it? Well, when you build a new engine, you want to make it a little rough for the piston rings to seat inside the cylinder. So, I can show you how it's done. We just lubricated the hone, stuck it down in the cylinder, run it up and down for a while, stop it before you remove the hone, pull it out, and voila, you got it. You either have a cross-hatch pattern, or you got a glazing hone here that's going to break it.

But with that done, Len, we have a problem because, you know, all this stuff's still a rough surface. You got some break-in oil, and that's specific.

Len Groom: It is what you want to do there. You're creating that surface finish where there's actually some peaks and some valleys in there. What you want to do is knock those down and make a mated surface between the cylinder liner and the ring.

So, the way you do that with an oil is you use a little bit less robust base oil, uh, and you use quite a bit of anti-wear protection additive. So, you see that kind of a common thing in breaking oils, and what that'll do is it'll allow those mating surfaces to get closer to touching and actually seat. So, you're knocking off some high edges, and you're seating those things together.

John Gardner: Now, AMSOIL is a synthetic oil company. This is a little bit different. Tell us about this actual break-in oil.

Len Groom: Yeah, the break-in oil here, to do what I was just describing, we actually are using a conventional base stock for this product. It just knocks those peaks and valleys down better.

John Gardner: Yeah, and that's a good idea. You absolutely want to knock them down. You want to break it in, so take it easy and get it out of there. It recommends about 1,000 miles or your manufacturer specifications.