Breaking in engine technique

[20Vcqdriver]

Worth noting, my oil temps got up to 90 on the first few drives, perhaps a good reason to take it easy until they are normal; now they sit at 60 with normal driving and it feels alot 'looser'. As I said in Sonic's thread, most notably the first 10-20 miles it loosened up and then up to about 80 miles it improved a little more.

.

60 seems low as the oil really needs to be at 70 degrees to work properly at specified ratings.
My oil normally settles at 90degrees during steady driving and upto 120 when using a lot of WOT, despite a 25 row cooler. I am presently using pro-s 10w50 but will be following the just off WOT run in when the block gets uprated next year.

[Thuppu]

Idle for 4hrs - no that must be ****** - glazed bores big time surely !

Yeah, it's propably the reason all new tfsi engines burns tonns of oil.

[A80Avant]

haha

could be!

@20V that is interesting to see that with a 25row cooler you still have 90C oil temp. Do you have the same dials as the rs2 has? cause from the picture posted above we cannot tell whether the second bold line is actually the 90C mark, and we could actually be seeing the same temps, only in differently calibrated gauges!

[20Vcqdriver]

haha

could be!

@20V that is interesting to see that with a 25row cooler you still have 90C oil temp. Do you have the same dials as the rs2 has? cause from the picture posted above we cannot tell whether the second bold line is actually the 90C mark, and we could actually be seeing the same temps, only in differently calibrated gauges!

According to Phil Payne the oil Thermostat to pass oil through the cooler does not open until a fair bit after 100degrees anyway, so cooler only come into play on lots of fast blasts. As mines a series 2 I have the digital bar graph readout in the centre console. So it only has steps of 10 degrees starting from 60.

[Thuppu]

And the reason for that is, that normally the oil thermostat allows the oil to start flow thru the oil cooler at 110C and it's fully open at 120-125C.

Edit. Late.

[JP]

Reason for mineral oil during the break in period is that is contains the least amount detergents and other additives which stop the rings shaping themselves to the bore as they just glide straight over it causing glazing as they don't seal properly allowing fuel to mix with the oil becoming an abrasive over time.

The problem is the mineral oil cannot not protect your big end bearings very well under high load and breaks down too quickly under the extreme temperatures of turbo use. Hence needing to be on at least semi or fully synthetic before any major loading of an engine on a dyno or high rpm useage.

hth

[Tom_]

Folks, what mineral oils are available at reasonable prices these days for break-in engines? Don't want an expensive one as the oil won't be there for a long I have used Amsoil break-in, which is quite expensive for another flush

[Tractor Dave]

Pop down to your local tractor dealer and get their cheapest 10/40 mineral oil. Its what i use.

[Tom_]

Nice I found mineral oil from Ravenol, its 10l for a really good price, around 40 eur, not sure if its suitable or not but it seems the oil included some anti frictional and anti wear additives, so I guess its a no go.
MANNOL SHPD TS-3 10W-40
Thats why you have where you nickname came from?

[Tractor Dave]

Yes. We have a small holding and two tractors. I can get 20l of morris 10/40 tractor oil for £40 here in Wales.

[K Simmonds]

Pop down to your local tractor dealer and get their cheapest 10/40 mineral oil. Its what i use.

Nothing wrong with using a mineral 10/40 or 15/40 diesel oil, it should have plenty of zinc and phosphorous in it, just watch out for too much Molybdenum, don't want it too slippy if you're using it to seat rings...

Fine for doing an initial break in with no load, just elevated fluctuating idle. I wouldn't want to leave it in for much longer than an hour as it should have seated the rings fine by then... The bottom end shells would prefer something like a 10//W40 sem synthetic if your going to start applying load to the engine on the road.

The Morris stuff is great value, like all their products, and I think John Deere do a very good value one as well.

I ran one of my old slightly ratty £300 Didgifant 8V GTI's on regular 15W40 Castrol semi synthetic diesel oil or ages and a serious 30 mile thrashing to Hereford and back daily... It was high mileage and would smoke a bit when hot, plus it set the 1.8 bar oil buzzer off a couple of times with normal 10W40 semi synthetic on hot days.

So I put the diesel oil in as an experiment and as far I was concerned it was fixed.

The oil was free as it was knocking about from when my father had a B3 80 or 90 TDI.

Not perfect but less smoke and no buzzer, good enough for a couple more years and eventually sold for a substantial profit.
I use to hammer it down the M4 and back weekly one summer, as I was seeing a couple of posh birds down there...

[K Simmonds]

Folks, what mineral oils are available at reasonable prices these days for break-in engines? Don't want an expensive one as the oil won't be there for a long I have used Amsoil break-in, which is quite expensive for another flush

For the amount of time you've run your engine the breaking in process should be finished. You could use 10W40 desil oil to extend the breaking in process but I'd simply go for normal semi synthetic 10W40 VAG Quantum oil if you want half something half decent and cheap to use as a flushing oil.

Get it for about £15 for 5L on special offer from TPS if I buy ten 5l's so I always have a couple in stock, that's the oil I've used in my naturally aspirated cars for a very long time.

You really should do a compression test on the cylinders to make sure your new rings have seated properly at this stage.

[Tom_]

Locally , I could buy a Champion 15W40 Active Defence, its a mineral oil, 5l quantity about 24 eur...so I will take one for flush out

[K Simmonds]

Locally , I could buy a Champion 15W40 Active Defence, its a mineral oil, 5l quantity about 24 eur...so I will take one for flush out

That sounds good to me, should do the flushing job fine, give it an hour or so and drop it out and change the oil filter yet again.

[Tom_]

Yeah, the old oil was removed, and the mineral one filled, I will keep it there for an hour and then again flush it with the same mineral, and afterward the Mannol 10W50 will go there. I am using those tall/big diesel oil filters to keep as much debris as possible.