Poll: Which is better... drive hard or drive easy?

[mechtech2]

Beat it. Your highest cylinder pressure, and greatest outward ring pressure, is at your torque peak. Full throttle at about 2/3 max RPM is about right.
Those long life bores seem a bit tough to break in quickly, so help them out! Use the loud pedal.

 

[92saturnsl2]

What is the danger of lugging the engine during break in?

Also I heard full throttle is bad initially, as the oil can glaze onto the cylinder wall because combustion temps are so high. Mid-range RPM's with 2/3 throttle or less is what I use for the first 500-1000 miles. After 1k, I usually do a couple runs to redline at full throttle, then I consider it broken in.

 

[heath1]

...so what's the thoughts on the notion that, these days, the majority of engines' pistons are already seated before the vehicle has arrived at the dealership?

 

[ryansride2017]

I've never have noticed a correlation with long term engine health and engine break-in. If it's a good engineered engine, it probably doesn't matter. My current ride has 160,000 miles on her and uses less than a pint in 5000 miles. The only high rev's it ever sees is when the transmission downshifts to get over the numerous hill in my area....the tach will go up to 3.5K to 4K RPM.

 

[hominid7]

I had a VW mechanic tell me once that on solid lifter cars, driving them too easily all the time caused the lash to go out of spec sooner than otherwise would be the case on a car driven in a more aggressive fashion.

My current Mazda has solid lifters and at 55,000 miles seems to be giving me some valve noise that i assume is too much lash. The car sees a lot of short trips when the engine does not fully warm up and the car never gets above 30 mph, and i'm wondering if that may be part of the problem.

 

[brianl703]

That really depends. If you're merging onto an interstate highway with a posted limit of 65MPH from a highway with a posted speed limit of 35MPH, driving easy may not be the way to go.