05-17-2015, 04:08 PM
The post below, courtesy of Guth, Red Mist and others, tells you all you need to know.
OK, now I will weigh in. Yes, listen to Miguel's wrench, he is right. I ride my bike like a racebike much of the time, keeping the R's between 5-8 and sometimes getting into the red zone. It loves it. I only have 3500 miles on it but this is how I've broken in every bike since 1983 and some have had 30-40 thousand on them when I traded or sold them, and no worries.
My bike did use a touch of oil in the first couple thousand miles but that is normal for an air-cooled engine during break-in.
Doesn't seem to be using any more oil now, though. Seems practically bulletproof.
Interesting article - thanks for sharing.
Article is exactly correct. Break-in for the engine is 90 percent piston rings. Bearings, gears, etc. don't need to be broken-in, but the rings need to seal and mate to the cylinders, otherwise compression will be poor and the engine will use excessive amounts of oil.
Other items on the bike, such as brake rotors, brake pads, tires, and such also need to wear-in so for this reason Honda tell you to take it easy until it's more certain something wasn't put together backwards.
I've found that brakes these days seem to take several thousand miles to really come in. Some guys right away toss the rubber lines and install stainless but I held off on that, and now that the CB1100 is fully broken-in, the brakes are great and I see no reason to change anything. Same was true for my FZ8 but ironically the GSX-R absolutely needed not only stainless lines (I used Goodridge) but a better more aggressive Galfer pad. And those are Brembo calipers.
These days the thing we need to work on is our skills, constantly. They've got the hardware sorted out, meseemeth.
Cheers
OK, now I will weigh in. Yes, listen to Miguel's wrench, he is right. I ride my bike like a racebike much of the time, keeping the R's between 5-8 and sometimes getting into the red zone. It loves it. I only have 3500 miles on it but this is how I've broken in every bike since 1983 and some have had 30-40 thousand on them when I traded or sold them, and no worries.
My bike did use a touch of oil in the first couple thousand miles but that is normal for an air-cooled engine during break-in.
Doesn't seem to be using any more oil now, though. Seems practically bulletproof.
Interesting article - thanks for sharing.
Article is exactly correct. Break-in for the engine is 90 percent piston rings. Bearings, gears, etc. don't need to be broken-in, but the rings need to seal and mate to the cylinders, otherwise compression will be poor and the engine will use excessive amounts of oil.Other items on the bike, such as brake rotors, brake pads, tires, and such also need to wear-in so for this reason Honda tell you to take it easy until it's more certain something wasn't put together backwards.
I've found that brakes these days seem to take several thousand miles to really come in. Some guys right away toss the rubber lines and install stainless but I held off on that, and now that the CB1100 is fully broken-in, the brakes are great and I see no reason to change anything. Same was true for my FZ8 but ironically the GSX-R absolutely needed not only stainless lines (I used Goodridge) but a better more aggressive Galfer pad. And those are Brembo calipers.
These days the thing we need to work on is our skills, constantly. They've got the hardware sorted out, meseemeth.
Cheers