Bonneville Dreamer

[Mr.Jason]

So obviously you dont agree with the drive it hard break in method? it is usually a toss up as to what people believe or say... but unless you tear apart a motor in trials such as you are doing you wont know which break in method is best.

[KLZE Porsche]

So obviously you dont agree with the drive it hard break in method? it is usually a toss up as to what people believe or say... but unless you tear apart a motor in trials such as you are doing you wont know which break in method is best.

I am just not a believer in breaking in an engine hard. I have had a lot of good luck with breaking them in easy. As a matter of fact -the lowest miles that I have gotten out of engines were on the ones where I got a little too anxious -a little too early. Many of the hi-tech bearings have a break in metal layer that is made to micro polish the bearings to the crank.

I have even taken it a step further before and mirror polished the KL crank until my elbows ran out of grease. And I will tell you that it is no easy chore by any means. That nitriding is hard as hell! But worth it? -Hell yes! I got to abuse that one more than any other engine that I have ever abused. So micro polishing -worth the effort? Answer: Definitely!

[24klzev6]

is it done? more pics .................

[Zepticon]

I always break my engines in soft. I run them at idle for several hours, then I run them at 2k for an hour. Then I do an oil and filter change and run it at idle again for an hour and then I start putting easy road miles on them until I hit about 500 miles or more. Then I gradually begin to push it a bit harder and harder until I am over 1000 miles or so. Then I change the oil and filter once again and it is open season on Honda zipper heads (meaning punks in Honda civics that could have a fast car if they would lay off the pot -the ones that do not use turn signals to change lanes and like to throw their POS in front of you at 70mph with inches to spare).

Oh -and I always use moly engine assembly lube.

I have been reading a bit about it (thats why i asked) and it seems its just like with speaker cables Two lairs of believers throwing rocks at the other camp

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

On a superficial read it makes "sense" but reading it more closely its all about pressure on the rings, and the combustion pressure wont be rev dependent?
But then again, it will be load dependent, and if the engine is under load, the pressure on the pistons, and thus ring will be higher?
It make sense, but then as he says, why on earth does the manufacture say otherwise?

Why do you do it the way you do?

[KLZE Porsche]

Why do you do it the way you do?

I break in engines the way I do because I used to follow F1 engine technology religiously and I even had joined a F1 thread that was for drivers and mechanics. A prominent builder was explaining that this is how they break in their engines. Of course there are lots of different ways people have to break in engines. I have even heard a few really off-the-wall methods but I just stick to what has always worked for me.

When I break in -I use cheap oil since I will only be using it very briefly. And the filters are relatively cheap so I don't mind wasting a few of them as well. I have some information on break in and several articles that I have saved on my hard drive and I had intended to post them on my website for reference but a couple of the websites are no longer up and so I cannot give credit to the publisher of the info so I can't can't post it up.

I am in the middle of building the next test hog at this very moment and so I guess I can snap a couple of photos as I am building. Oh and before anyone asks -the pink color on parts is not rust. It is a very fine copper coating.

This is how I keep from scratching the rod journals when I am installing the pistons and rods:


Moly Lube:


Soaking the piston in oil:


Pre-inserting the piston into the bore:


Ring clamp in place:


Tap down with the wood end of my piston mallot:

[stoker100]

When I break in -I use cheap oil since I will only be using it very briefly. And the filters are relatively cheap so I don't mind wasting a few of them as well. I have some information on break in and several articles that I have saved on my hard drive and I had intended to post them on my website for reference but a couple of the websites are no longer up and so I cannot give credit to the publisher of the info so I can't can't post it up.

I have to disagree with using cheap oil on the first oil change/fill, this IS the oil that will fill the HLA's and stay in there until the next time the engine is apart and therefore its critical to use good oil to do the primary pump up. (just my opinion anyway)

While i ran my engine in using the "flog it" method and its still going perfect 5000 miles later i can understand the reasoning behind going soft and would recommend people do take it easy for the first 1-2000 miles, use good oil on the first fill (or at least until you know the HLA's are 100% filled) then cheap stuff until your down to regular interval changes.

[KLZE Porsche]

I have to disagree with using cheap oil

When I say cheap oil - I mean Penzoil 10-40w (Yellow container). I don't go any cheaper than that. I just upgrade to better oil as the break-in gets further and further into it.

I do not even have to worry about break-in on this one because it was a low mile KLZE that I picked up in the JY for $185 and some change. I am setting the ring gaps exactly where they were and I only have done a simple clean-up and inspection of all the parts to make sure the bearings were not spun. I didn't even want to remove the carbon (for fear of scratching them) since there was not much build-up anyway. So this is a perfect test hog for the polished valves and a couple of other things.

Also -it seams that most everyone here is only concerned with ring break-in. I am more concerned with bearing break-in than rings. I have never had any problems with rings seating other than when the rings have had problems. The old RR Probe engine had chrome rings that started losing the chrome and damaged the pistons and cylinders. And this last test hog had bad rings to start with. It had burrs on the ends of the ring gaps that I should have noticed before assembly. It might have saved the engine for a bit more life. I now will check every single piston ring in the future for burrs at the end gap before installation. I never knew that factory (non-filed) rings could have burrs but I do now!

I take a lot of time to make sure the ring gaps get clocked in accordance with the shop manual. I even started putting the ring clamp on after I have started installing the piston/rod because when you put the clamp on before -it often likes to move the rings as you tighten it. I found that I get less movement when I start in in the block part way and then clamp it down and finish tapping it down the rest of the way. And the rubber guards make it simple enough for a first grader to do it. They guide it down perfectly centered onto the journal with no risk of scratching. Then you pop off the ones from the heads, un-screw the bolts and remove the lower pieces of tubing -then your rod is in place and ready for an end cap.

[Jarod7920]

The last few motors i used. I started out with straight rotella 30w. Very high in zinc. Something most new oils lack.

[Zepticon]

Keep the pics coming
I love seeing stuff like this, even if its really "nothing special" going on. Seeing how stuff is done = learning, and i love that

[KLZE Porsche]

Keep the pics coming
I love seeing stuff like this, even if its really "nothing special" going on. Seeing how stuff is done = learning, and i love that

I figured that and so that is why I started posting the simple stuff. A lot of people forget that some people are at the beginning part of the learning curve and so even though this stuff may seem too basic for some -it is probably still very good info for others.

Here is how I now prime the entire oil system to include the longitudinal oil bore:


I use 3M aluminum speed tape to make a cupped funnel on the side of the oil filter boss and then pour oil down into it. This will cause the oil to flow into the oil manifold bore and also into the oil pump. I rotate the crank counterclockwise (backwards) so that it draws the oil back down into the pump. After oil is pouring liberally out of the pickup tube -the oil pump should be primed well enough. But this process gets the oil into just about everywhere it needs to go below the oil bore.

Here is how I remove and install the knock sensor with a modified 24mm socket:



Notice how I have applied silicone to the top of the sensor. This is because the potting becomes a nasty ooze after a while and also because the wire flexes too much and can cause the signal wire to short to the shield over time with too much movement on the harness. If you pull a lot of engines in your car as I do then your harness probably gets moved quite often. So this is partially just a preventative measure.

[KLZE Porsche]

I made a new discovery for those who may be interested and those who may be DIYers who are not affraid to venture where "my mechanic" auto owners dare not go.

In the process of building this recent build -I decided to check cam clearances because I had the plasti-gauge and because I am tired of loosing engines pre-maturely due to oil problems. So -the set of heads I was going to use had some cam cap scoring from spun rod bearings in the bottom end. I cleaned up the cam caps by hand with 400 grit w-o-d and then went to 1000 grit and finally finished up with MAAS polishing cream to put a mirror finish on the bearing surfaces.

In checking the cam to journal clearances -I found that I was in the range of .001 large on all of them or so. I know that cam caps take all the wear above the split line because the springs are always pushing up on them. The bottom end can stay pristine while the top gets scored. So this creates an oblong shape in the cam caps by the out-of-tolerance amount. So since I was out by approximately .001 -I then put them on my machined surface aluminum slab with a sheet of 1000 grit and hand milled .002 off the bottom or so. I actually did it a little bit at a time until the clearances came out to upper tolerance -minus .001 rather than plus .001. I checked the clearance with plasti-gauge both longitudinally and radially. This gave me a good indication -if I was messing up the concentricity of the cam-to-bearing alignment.

I pulled all of the clearances down to minus .001 under the max clearance value so that all were within tollerance by .001. I cranked it up last night and it ran flawlessly. This morning when I made my 85 mile trip to work -I started out at around 50psi at cruise for most of the trip and after it got heat soaked (close to work) the oil pressure had dropped down to 42psi. This is a lot better than the last one that was 35 or so to start and around 28 by the time I got to work. It has higher oil pressure than I have ever seen out of any of my KL re-builds and I have to attribute it to having the close cam tollerances.

Remember that I did all of this by hand sanding alone. No machine work was involved at all. I will post up some photos later on how I did this.

P.S. Oil pressure compared to yours is irrevelant because I never calibrated my guage. So all of my readings are only compared to previous readings. If 42 to 50 psi is not good then I am sure that if I were to calibrate the guage -it would read higher. So I guess I should be saying that I saw approximately a 15psi increase over typical past builds.

[mac1]

my turbo cams are scorn from spun bearings, I want to know more how to fix that.

[poissonn]

that's very interesting! I have my blown ZE heads and cams that are scored too from the rod carnage that happened. I was keeping them in hope to save them...you might have a solution for it!

thanks for your great work

[KLZE Porsche]

that's very interesting! I have my blown ZE heads and cams that are scored too from the rod carnage that happened. I was keeping them in hope to save them...you might have a solution for it!

thanks for your great work

There is only one problem with this. You cannot fix cams this way. To fix either you need to remove material. To remove material from cam journals -means shrinking diameter and increasing gap. With the cam caps you can remove a minimal amount of material and then shrink the gap by shortening the cap some. The only way to recover cams is to shrink the journals by sanding or machining and then machining the head to match. And that would be far more money than just finding a good set of cams and sending them to colt for re-grind. But now -at least I know that I can salvage heads that I have been tossing in the scrap bin in the past.

P.S. This morning's oil pressure was under-rated because I hadn't burped the cooling system so I believe it was running slightly hotter than normal. When I drove home (after the car auto-burped itself) the oil pressure never dropped below 50psi at cruise.

[Mr.Jason]

The only way to recover cams is to shrink the journals by sanding or machining and then machining the head to match.

i am kinda surprised you would even mention sanding a cam journal... You should only have bearing journals ground + polished.

If you have an expensive cam such as a regrind or aftermarket that is damaged they can do some processes to rebuild the worn journal, but it is not cheap.