In light of the plethora of car related postings tonight I though id get the stw concencus. I’m in the fortunate position of getting a new diesel company car on Friday.

As I will hopefully have this for 3 years and therefore want it to operate as well as it can for that time ( ie go like the clappers!) i want to know best way to treat it for the first few thousand miles traditionally you’d just use half revs or so for that time but I’ve also heard that for turbo diesels, ragging it a bit can help.

What do you think?

See what the manual says!! Mine clearly said to keep it below a certain speed for the first 1000km.

Just reached 4k in 4 weeks on my new VW Sharan, I have just driven it normally, ie shifting when the economy display shows you to.

I wouldnt rag it silly, but have never had a problem with getting upto 3krpm on any of my company cars

Modern cars don’t need running in! 😉

if it were a sports car and you were hoping to get every last drop of performance out of it, AND treat it ‘right’, then there are things you can do, such as exercising it in the lower rev range early on, and then moving up the range bit by bit over time, and also letting the engine ‘run down’ as you slow towards junctions etc etc.
for a normal car though, just going on varied drives on a mix of a and b roads should be sufficient, rather than a plod up the motorway at the same engine speed, in conjunction with a bit of RTFM, should do the trick. 😉
enjoy your new car.

RTFM

Modern cars don’t need running in!

You should tell all the maker’s that, they’d be delighted to know I’m sure. 🙄

Can remember reading in motorcycle news they did a test on 2 CBR900’s. One was ragged from the start and the other was run in as per the manual said. The ragged one produced something in the region off 10-15 BHP more. Not sure how long the engine would last though.

Being realistic, there is a good chance if you collect it with more than about 2 miles on the clock that at some point it has been driven by the dealer/lease company staff, even if just moving it from one part of the compound to another or a mile up the road to the handover point.

They almost certainly ragged it.

Rag it, if it suffers a loss of performance in whilst you own it, claim you ran it in and get it fixed under warranty. 😉

generally i think the consensus is to drive it normally and avoid ragging it in the early few k.

Modern engines in some cases look after themselves in that department anyhow … quite a few are self-limiting for the early stages ( i.e. will red-line themselves at lower rev values until 5000miles etc, then after that, open up the full revv range. )

you should see how they treat them in the docks loading into ships. cringe worthy. rag it.

Never ran a car in yet, just drove them as normal and just about all my cars have done over 100K before trading them in and never had any major bills from poor driving.Only thing that has changed now which I dont think is good, we always used to change the oil at 1000 miles from new, then every 5/6000 miles those days are gone but never thought it a bad thing.

I always run them in. I always feel their pain.
Never ragged an engine in my life.
What difference has it made?
Who knows.

You could, y’know, drive it normally? (-:

Modern cars don’t need running in!

I’m fairly sure this is generally correct; almost certainly it’s not the issue it used to be. Just drive it normally for a couple of weeks, don’t rag it but don’t drive like your gran either.

flip side is that some engines further down the line need a good ragging to clean em out.

I know my big block engines in the 4×4’s have benefited from the occassion long trip where you’re making progress.

Always ran my lorries in and I could never tell the difference.

If you always did it, you’ve nothing to tell the difference from.

If it was my car i’d drive it like i stole it from day one. Its worth noting however that modern ECU’s can log certain engine parameters and in the event of a warranty claim they may be able to see how the car has been driven in the past.

Good debate!
I’m not a very aggressive driver except when I find myself in mid Wales on a sunny afternoon so shouldn’t be too much of a bind to keep the revs down until the 1st oil change.

I was going to say exactly what Porter Jamie said!

It will have already had a good ragging around the ferry port, you should see them loading cars it’s one masssive race! They have a series of people carriers running the drivers back and every few minutes you see them wheelspinning and screaming the cars up the ferry as fast as they possibly can. All from cold!

fisha – Member
generally i think the consensus is to drive it normally and avoid ragging it in the early few k.

Modern engines in some cases look after themselves in that department anyhow … quite a few are self-limiting for the early stages ( i.e. will red-line themselves at lower rev values until 5000miles etc, then after that, open up the full revv range. )

That’s quite interesting about cars having built in rev limiters when they don’t have much in the way of mileage on them, it makes sense though and I guess it would be pretty easy to programme into the ECU.

One thing about diesel turbos (well all turbos to be honest) is that they like a period of cooling down before being turned off, so drive it normally (plus ragging it a wee bit at times), but in the last mile or two make sure you keep it off boost to let things cool down gradually rather quickly.

Run in slow, always slow

Heard some pretty convincing arguements for a hard run in. Not recklessly ragging it but not sparing the revs. Theory is you need revs and heat to bed the rings in properly, too gentle and it just polishes the bores and you’ll always have blow by.

End of the day, whatever you do it’ll easily last three years and resale isn’t an issue, rag it!

It should be making noises like an Isle of Man campsite full of germans at TT time.

You’ve got to bounce it off the rev limiter in every gear for the first 8k miles to get the oil flowing you see.

Motorbikes and cars have high tolerances in design. The cylinders have an etched or scored surface when put together so the piston rings seat to the bore. If you are gentle it might not happen. There are arguments that seem to make sense either way, but I’d say Drive as normal, not cautious or slow, just normal, using full rev range. No better way to bed it in.

fisha – Member
flip side is that some engines further down the line need a good ragging to clean em out.

I know my big block engines in the 4×4’s have benefited from the occassion long trip where you’re making progress.

My first car was like that.

It was mainly used for “local” trips ranging from 2 to 20 miles every week, but every 3 months we would travel to see parents/in-laws which would be a 700 mile round trip and after doing these trips the fuel efficiency would improve and the engine revved much more freely.

A friend of mine said that it would be due to the engine reaching an optimum temperature and sustaining it for a long period which would then blow all of the crap out of it. Seemed like a reasonable theory in my opinion.

Many years ago when I worked in a Ford garage we asked a rep about this and his reply was to just get out, give it some welly, if it breaks it breaks and would have done anyway.
Cars that are driven”properly” rather than “normally” usually are a bit quicker & free reving I find.
Wife and I share our car and she uses it for commuting and I use it for everything else and it always feels a bit slugish until I give it a good “clean out” 😆

Again yrs ago when petrol was in short supply and a speed limit had been intoduced many “performance” cars developed missfires and poor fuel consumption. The cure? A good blast, high revs & low gears until everything was nice and clean(black clouds of soot from exhaust)

So, all depends if you are worried about fuel consumption or not but I reckon keeping the revs up, gears low and accelerating gently does the trick with a weekly longish drive if you have short commutes to clean up the systems