Motoman break in procedure, 21 years later

[stoinkythepig]

Some of you may recall a controversial break in procedure that was a topic of discussion amongst mostly sport motorcyclists back in the early 2000s. The gist of it was to get the engine up to operating temperature and then run it hard. The website is still out there: http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm

I received a brand new 2001 ZX9R as a birthday gift in March of 2002. I followed the Motoman procedure and broke it in hard, did an oil change at 500 miles and then changed oil every 5000ish miles afterward using various synthetic oils until I settled on Rotella T6 5W-40. I rode it for 111,000 miles and it was still going strong when I sold it. The current owner recently reported that it's still running great at 128,000+ miles.

I did replace the cylinder head at around 95,000 miles, if memory serves, because the valves had run out of lash adjustment. While I had the head off, I was able to inspect the cylinder walls and they were spectacular. They all still had contiguous cross hatch, there was no scuffing to speak of, and there was no wear ridge. I replaced the head instead of the valves because a used, low mile head was well under $200 delivered; and replacing a head is far less work than replacing 16 valves. FWIW, if you ever need to take the engine out of a modern sport bike, it's probably easiest to put the bike on stands, block the engine up from the floor to support it as it sits, unbolt the engine, and lift the bike off the engine.

I think the hard break in procedure worked, but I don't have a control to compare it to. Anyone here break a sport bike in gently and get that kind of life out of it?

[SRTie4k]

I think "break-in" is sort of nonsense that shade tree mechanics of yesteryear loved to speculate about, and that it really has no bearing on the life expectancy of modern engines. Every video I've ever seen of the engine building process by the big OEMs show them button up a block, put it on a test stand and immediately wring the piss out of it. The break-in procedure that's spelled out in the manual is really just a remnant of the days when engines had shit tolerances, when it actually mattered how one treated an engine.

The only bike I ever bought brand new and ran up was my 1290SA. I "broke it in" as per the manual (although I did break the 6000 RPM limit on several occasions) and put 57k miles on it before selling it and it still ran wonderfully and never used a drop of oil. My prior TL1000S had something like ~70k miles on it when I sold it and the engine ran great (although the rest of the bike was a pile), but I didn't buy that brand new and I have no idea how prior owners treated it...smutty want to ring in?

The only bike that had serious engine issues that I've been associated with was my buddy's 2016 Tiger 800XC. He broke it in with a slightly heavy hand, and by 33k miles it was eating a quart of oil every 500 miles. We do suspect it was the valve guides that were leaking, however, and we think when he got his first valve adjustment done that it wasn't actually done by the dealer in question. We have no proof of that, but the damage was done. That bike must have been a Friday special though; it had a lot of problems.

[boosten lebaron]

I actually use a slow friend of mine to break in all my bikes. Everything is by the book with him. I have yet to have any engine problems on anything he has done and they are all pretty fast compared to other model bikes. The motoman method scared me lol.

[Paul_E_D]

We are about to break in a brand new Aprilia 660. It's a track only bike, and will get broken in on track. No way in hell are we keeping it below 7k rpm for 600 miles or anything like that. But we also won't go flogging it off the limiter for a while. The natural progression of getting used to a new bike will mean progressively pushing it harder as the sessions tick by. We will do the 600 mile oil change and never look back.

[petro]

Some of it is second hand but could be about as close as a control you can get..

My sister bought her Street Triple used with low miles, and had some oil consumption issues. She brought it to a mechanic who knew the bike and the previous owner, and he said he was very slow/cautious/babied it etc. His recommendation for a fix without spending $Texas was an Italian tune up. AFAIK it still burns some oil, but I guess it could just be a Triumph thing as mentioned above lol.

On the other hand, I bought my Street Triple new and pseudo-followed motoman. I tried to respect factory specified rev limits but cycled it with plenty of load on the motor in getting up to those revs and decel after. I haven’t had any issues.

[BSR6]

This example involves 2 strokes so it may not apply but my uncle always bought two identical snowmobiles. One for him, and one for my aunt. He is an aggressive rider and applies a hard break in. My aunt always babies hers. Even after a couple of years and several thousand miles of riding, there has been a distinct difference between his machine and hers. My uncle's has always been measurably faster and far more responsive than my aunts. My cousin and I would always run them head-to-head and swap back and forth just for fun and you would think they were two different machines. This has always been the case every time he bought new sleds dating back to the early 90's. Considering he buys new machines every 3 years or so, it's a lot of sleds so the sample size is decent and includes both carbureted and fuel injected models.

Years ago, my buddy and I ventured out on his parent's bikes which were two Honda Rebel 250s. Same scenario. Dad rode his more aggressively than mom. Mom's machine was noticeably slower and far less responsive.

Back in '05 I bought a brand-new Yamaha RX-1 (a 4 stroke 1000cc snowmobile for those who aren't familiar). I studded the track out of the box and the first time I rode it was an afternoon of drag racing on a nearby lake. From then on, I never let up. I avoided sustained periods at high RPM for the first few hundred miles, but I pushed it as hard as I could otherwise from day one. As long as I owned it, I never saw it drop oil and the oil was always super clean regardless of how many miles I went between changes. It was FAST. Everybody made fun of those sleds because they were supposedly heavy and slow. I used to love running my mouth (realistically) about it. People would immediately break out in laughter and start shelling out insults about how slow RX-1s were. We'd race, they'd lose. Of course, then came the accusations of it not really being stock yada yada. The bitterness was entertaining. Damn it was fun. I outran everything with the exception of the Ski Doo Mach Zs of the same era. I also had trouble with the Artic Cat ZR900s (sometimes I beat them, sometimes they beat me, it was always close). Other than that, I could outrun any other stock machine.

Yes, this is all anecdotal, but I'm convinced that there's merit behind Moto Man's theory. Frankly, I'm surprised it isn't more widely recognized considering how obvious it's been over the years for me.

[PurplePackage]

Break-in to me means change the oil and filter on a new bike at 10, 100, and 1000 miles. No RPM restrictions, just ride. If you think that got all the metal out, you're good. If not, do another oil and filter change at 2000 miles.

[isaac_]

We are about to break in a brand new Aprilia 660. It's a track only bike, and will get broken in on track. No way in hell are we keeping it below 7k rpm for 600 miles or anything like that. But we also won't go flogging it off the limiter for a while. The natural progression of getting used to a new bike will mean progressively pushing it harder as the sessions tick by. We will do the 600 mile oil change and never look back.

Just don't go breaking it TOO hard like me

But your method was my method too.

[Paul_E_D]

Just don't go breaking it TOO hard like me

But your method was my method too.

I didn't say break it! I said break it in!

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[csmutty]

I think "break-in" is sort of nonsense that shade tree mechanics of yesteryear loved to speculate about, and that it really has no bearing on the life expectancy of modern engines. Every video I've ever seen of the engine building process by the big OEMs show them button up a block, put it on a test stand and immediately wring the piss out of it. The break-in procedure that's spelled out in the manual is really just a remnant of the days when engines had shit tolerances, when it actually mattered how one treated an engine.

The only bike I ever bought brand new and ran up was my 1290SA. I "broke it in" as per the manual (although I did break the 6000 RPM limit on several occasions) and put 57k miles on it before selling it and it still ran wonderfully and never used a drop of oil. My prior TL1000S had something like ~70k miles on it when I sold it and the engine ran great (although the rest of the bike was a pile), but I didn't buy that brand new and I have no idea how prior owners treated it...smutty want to ring in?

The only bike that had serious engine issues that I've been associated with was my buddy's 2016 Tiger 800XC. He broke it in with a slightly heavy hand, and by 33k miles it was eating a quart of oil every 500 miles. We do suspect it was the valve guides that were leaking, however, and we think when he got his first valve adjustment done that it wasn't actually done by the dealer in question. We have no proof of that, but the damage was done. That bike must have been a Friday special though; it had a lot of problems.

Really the biggest concern with break in is modern synthetic oils. They are too slippery to allow the ring to bed with the cylinder. Run it at temperature with dino oil without friction modifiers to allow the ring to bed and change after a few hundred miles. You can replace with synthetic at that point. That's all IMO. I always broke things before they reached their service life.

[e30addict]

I don't think it really matters much anymore. Warm it up and run it how you want.

I used Motoman on a Kawi 650 and the motor popped at 17k. Not sure if that was because of break in or having the motor pinned most of the time riding 2 up chasing liter bikes on Duc Dave ride. Motor actually went on a Kanc run that saw triple digits, allegedly.

The Tiger I bought new wasn't babied but I was little nicer. Sold it at 27k with no issues. The one I have currently has 53k on it. It will burn less then a quart on a 2600 mile trip. Run it up the highway at 80 in the heat and you can tell it uses more like clockwork though. Most of the triples seem to use some oil one way or another.

All the other bikes I've had were never around long enough to be remotely useful as data points.

[csmutty]

I don't think it really matters much anymore. Warm it up and run it how you want.

I used Motoman on a Kawi 650 and the motor popped at 17k. Not sure if that was because of break in or having the motor pinned most of the time riding 2 up chasing liter bikes on Duc Dave ride. Motor actually went on a Kanc run that saw triple digits, allegedly.

The Tiger I bought new wasn't babied but I was little nicer. Sold it at 27k with no issues. The one I have currently has 53k on it. It will burn less then a quart on a 2600 mile trip. Run it up the highway at 80 in the heat and you can tell it uses more like clockwork though. Most of the triples seem to use some oil one way or another.

All the other bikes I've had were never around long enough to be remotely useful as data points.

Depends on the engine. Subaru and triumph still don't know how to make an engine and have had ring problems recently.

[OneCheekRider]

Bought my R6 new 17 years ago and babied the break-in. Still runs great and has gotten good oil analysis results despite its track-only use and several periods of long-term storage. I have not bought a new motorcycle since but my z125 had 40 miles on the odo when I bought it and there is only one way to ride that bike: WOT. I can't imagine it will see 100k miles though

[Paul_E_D]

I have alwayd broken my R6 in on the dyno. A few cycles of varying load, then pull the pin. You can literally watch the HP climb run by run. This last motor I used synthetic because my builder said he always did it and never had an issue. The bike smoked for all the dyno runs. I think I blew it. It did improve and the HP came in after we ran MR12 fuel in it. But it was still smoky and consumed a little oil the first weekend on track. Now it seems to have bedded in and is neither smoking nor consuming oil anymore. Phew.

[feralchimp]

What I'm hearing is that I should get the ZX-4RR ECU flashed way earlier than 500 miles from now.

[RandyO]

never believed in break in, just get the engine up to running temp before you ream the hell out of it, and after a high rpm session, a cool down lap before you shut it off

[Paul_E_D]

All broken in. Ran 150 or so track miles just getting used to the bike and gradually pushing harder. The bike is really sweet handling and sounds killer. The suspension needs a little tweaking, but it's still great to ride

[isaac_]

All broken in. Ran 150 or so track miles just getting used to the bike and gradually pushing harder. The bike is really sweet handling and sounds killer. The suspension needs a little tweaking, but it's still great to ride

What do you have for suspenders? Ohlins? I'm surprised to read on FB it was too stiff. I had the opposite issue with mine.

[Paul_E_D]

So, I should say it felt harsh. The springs are apparently 8.8N (what that is in standard measurement I don't know. .90?) But we barely used half the travel. Sag was a bit weird with 30mm free sag and 43 rider sag. How could we not move the forks if it is that soft?

Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk

[Paul_E_D]

What gearing are you running? It's wicked tall stock.

[isaac_]

What gearing are you running? It's wicked tall stock.

-1 on the front. I think it's 16/43?

[jeantarrou]

Not apples to apples but the fire engine I work on was just returned to us with a new crate motor installed, the service manager told us explicitly, "drive it like you stole it". Easy to do driving to and from calls, but lots of idling when we're on scene...

[stoinkythepig]

Not apples to apples but the fire engine I work on was just returned to us with a new crate motor installed, the service manager told us explicitly, "drive it like you stole it". Easy to do driving to and from calls, but lots of idling when we're on scene...

Diesel or gas?

[jeantarrou]

Diesel or gas?

Diesel. And not knowing engine internals well enough I was wondering if that mattered (diesel vs gas)?

[jimmycapp]

I've been to a Perkins diesel engine plant. They run the shit out of them before shipping. Lol.