According to the MINI owners manual, you are supposed to baby the car for the first 1,200 miles before "gradually" ramping it up.

However the ECU that controls many aspects of how the MINI performs "learns" your driving style in the first few hundred miles (or less?)

Is there not an inherent conflict between these two? Won't my car "learn" that I am a sedate cautions driver rather than the somewhat more accurate lead footed road warrior?

 

i broke mine in hard, using full throttle, just limited the max rpm to under 4,500 per the om and never stayed at one rpm for long, ie change gears every couple minutes from 4th to 5th to 6th to 5th to 4th while holding the same speed

mostly, i stayed off the freeways, stop signs are your friend during breakin, another oportunity to run the gears

after 1200 miles, i gradually upped the max rpms over the next 300 miles until i was going to redline

i then changed the oil/filter

during breakin, i was only getting about 200 miles per tank, now i get over 400 per tank and once went 411 miles using only 9.8 gallons (41.9 mpg)

my cms all4 seems go get better fuel mileage than others do, and uses NO oil between oil/filter changes, i attribute this to my breakin procedure

i have broken engines in this way since i bought my first new vehicle, a 1974 bmw r60/6 motorcycle, i still have it, 120,000 miles later and it is still a good runner with all the original internal engine parts, except the valves because they were known to fail at about 90k-100k miles, i changed mine at 75k as a preventative measure

my r60/6 is faster than any other stock r60/6 i have seen and gets better fuel mileage too and to this day, uses no oil between oil/filter changes

scott

 

x2 - accelerate smartly & decelerate smartly leaving it in lower gears, don't baby it. Doesn't mean run it to 7k rpm but hard pulls to 3500-4500 & letting it slow down against the engine seems to be the best way to seat piston rings. Drop the oil @ an early interval & then drive it like you stole it, if you want to that is. Try to constantly vary engine speed & load, once it is broken in (first few hundred miles) you can change over to proper, consistent driving, or hammer it @ will.

 

My dealer said "drive it like you stole it!"

Keep it under 5000 rpm is probably a good rule and as "bccan" said - shift a lot.

Best thing you can do is change the oil between 500 and a 1000 miles no matter how you drive it.