Break in period

[Red Mist_imp]

Not long after I took delivery of my CB1100, I stopped by my favorite local independent bike shop to show it off. The shop owner previously worked for Honda Racing Corporation and was Miguel Duhamel's lead technician. He has one other person on staff, who was a mechanic at a local Honda dealership for 25 years until they had to close their doors. I feel very confident in their combined knowledge and tend to pick their brains whenever I get the chance. By the the time I stopped by the shop, I probably already had a little over a hundred miles or so on the bike. When the subject of break-in came up, they said to make sure that I had it fully warmed up before doing anything too crazy and to avoid constant RPMs for long stretches. Other than that, just ride it like I normally would, and then some, even taking it up around the redline if I felt like it. Then they reiterated that I should take it easy until I was sure the engine was warmed up. Honestly, I've never tended to baby new engines all that much, although I've always tried to avoid long stretches at constant RPMs early on. Still, I was caught a little off guard by the fact that they didn't frown on visiting the upper end of the RPM range so early on. Regardless, I didn't go there right away as I rarely wind it out that much anyway. Every once in a while though it's fun to experience.

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.

The modern consensus is, as far as I can tell, that the manual tells you not to be a hooligan with a new bike so you don't kill yourself and sue ("your honor, it says RIGHT IN THE MANUAL not to accelerate hard in the first 300 miles -- it's not our fault the plaintiff rode into the side of a mountain."). There's a whole lot of reasons why the "old" way of breaking engines in is no longer necessary.

Also, read this: http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm

I didn't do anything to temper my use of this bike and mine runs perfectly with zero oil burn. Of course, as far as statistics goes, that means nothing to anyone but me.

Interesting article - thanks for sharing.

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.