Break In Period - Effects on MPG

[Zwolfe]

I remember when I transplanted a JDM F22B engine into my 95 Odyssey that my uncle who was lending me a hand poured heavy weight gear oil into the spark plug holes. He said it'd help compression.

I looked at him like he was nuts but he's been a mechanic all his life and what the hell do I know compared to him so I didn't tell him not to do it and only inquired why he was doing it.

Smoke poured out of the exhaust to the point that the next day I got an error code from the O2 sensor and had to remove it and clean it with a steel wool brush and reinstalled it to clear the code.

[Eli]

The reason for moderate to high load ring-seating is because .. During engine operation, exhaust gasses get behind the rings and cam them outwards against the cylinder wall. This rapidly wears the tallest peaks off the crosshatch and beds the rings.

Something I should mention is that immediately after letting up on the run, don't let the engine just go back to idle.. engine brake down to idle. This helps wash all of the newly worn material off the cylinder walls and into the oil.

This explains it in more detail than I have time for right now:

Read every word. Twice. Understand it. Live it.

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

[MN Driver]

There is a good reason why we never see any oil consumption over the factory OCI of 7500 miles on these cars, the factory break-in took care of it. If oil consumption is an issue as the result of a bad break-in procedure if its either new or rebuilt, you'll see it right away. If it develops after say 150k miles either the rings have become worn or stuck, either due to abuse such as poor air filtration(such as a K&N that is not coated completely with oil), varnished oil due to too long between an oil change or engine overheat, or mechanical wear.

[Zwolfe]

Well hell. We picked up the Insight with 1 mile on it. Wife drove it home as I followed behind in the Odyssey.

It did get a 50 mile run down the Interstate going from 70-80 then through the nearby town and finally to our place.

Hopefully that was enough.

Better than the alternative of driving through a town / city 5 or 10 miles away and parking it never getting above 60 I guess, or even less.

[oceanconsulting]

Originally Posted by Eli

Dear Lord, please tell me you're doing oil analysis with drain intervals like that on your brand new car!

Well, as far as oil is concerned, I've followed the oil change estimates/warnings that the MID displays. Normally, I would change the oil every 3,000 on any car. The car is programmed to tell you when to change the oil as well as other maintenance intervals. I don't know what it's based on: mileage, cumulative engine revolutions, time, etc.

I'd be happy to change it more often if I knew I wasn't going to screw up the other maintenance interval warnings.

The other thing that makes me think that less frequent oil changes may be fine on this car is the fact that most of the time, it runs at fairly low RPM. Shifting into 'S' mode, the engine behaves like I would expect most other 4cyl cars to operate, between 2-3k RPM. In normal mode (drive), the car really does tend to drift down close to 1000 RPM. Of course, highway speeds are more like 2-3k RPM. So if in fact the engine is running fewer RPM, thereby less wear then wouldn't the need for refreshing the oil be less?

I did ask the dealer about doing more frequent oil changes and of course they were all for it. I didn't really get a straight answer though on how they handle the maintenance interval counter.

The paranoid hemisphere of my brain says, a car manufacturer would want people to do fewer oil changes (more wear) as part of planned obsolescence. On the other hand, I want to believe that Honda is a better car company than that.

Has anyone else with higher miles stuck strictly to the MID maintenance intervals?

I can't say enough good things about the car.