I have an agreement with my dealer to have someone drive the car to my town in the near future when it arrives. It's a 4 hour trip. I am getting cold feet about this somewhat. The driver will not be owning the car and has a task to complete and will be on an interstate highway where high speeds are possible. I am wondering if they will give a hoot about the break-in speeds and rpms. I can go get the car but it will be inconvenient because my husband is working out of town. The dealer assured me that the driver varies speeds, doesn't go too fast, blah blah but what do y'all think. Anyone have one carefully delivered to them?

 

I would pick the car up myself. Just for the piece mind that you know it was broken in correctly and you would never have to second guess yourself.

 

Picking it up yourself is only a benefit if you know and plan to do a breakin 'better' than what the delivery dude might do. To me, driving it off the lot and only thinking about keeping it under 4500 rpm and 90 mph is not much of a breakin procedure. If you are concerned, and we guess you are, or you wouldn't have posted this concern, I suggest you adopt one of the many specific break in procedures discussed in a lot of places on this forum and then do one of them. Just driving home carefully is no better than having some other driver drive it home carefully.

YD

 

Oh the joy, of starting up your very own MINI and driving it home yourself. I'd say if you're wavering in your decision go with your gut and drive it home. It will be the best four hours you spend bonding with your new MINI. Congrats!

 

My thoughts exactly . I drove our '06 MCS off the showroom floor, that was sooo cool .

 

Thanks for the advice, I am a big proponent of going with gut feelings and I did have a bit of jealousy about someone else driving him first.
So how far did y'all have to drive and what is the recommended procedure besides under 90 and under 4500 rpms and varied rps with no cruise control. My trip home is 4 hours. I also plan on an early oil change. I have spent the last hour googling this and found some interesting stuff...

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

ps. do you void the warranty if you change your own oil?

 

Do what the link says, change at 1000, use full synthetic, don't reset your computer and you will be good to go.

YD

 

snip

No you do not!! If ANY dealer tells you they must do the oil changes just ask them to put it in writing and watch them back off. I hate dealers that tell people that!

Earl

 

snip

No you do not!! If ANY dealer tells you they must do the oil changes just ask them to put it in writing and watch them back off. I hate dealers that tell people that!

Earl

PS: By the way where are you located? And if you don't mind...what age bracket are you in? I just turned 66 a few days ago and it has been a long time since I have heard three on a tree. I tried to buy a brand new 64 Falcon 289 four on the floor but the dealer screwed me up and I never got it.

Earl

 

Do NOT believe everything you read.

Its just another website somebody threw on the net.

Anyone can do that.

If you don't want to believe what BMW has written in the manual ....

You pay your money and take your chances!

 

Hey Earl, Im is coastal NC and just turned 40. I sent my dad that link and he said that his dad, always opened up a new car in short bursts right after they got it so it would be faster and he said it seemed to work. I'm still a little bit nervous about that, but after hearing that bit from my dad, I tend to believe it. My papa and dad always had fast cars and my first was a 67 RS Camaro 327. I love how easy the old cars are to work on and repair, I rebuilt the 1 barrel Holley on my falcon. I'll probably be selling the old bird soon. It gets good mileage too.

 

CB, it's usually best to go with your gut. I have a 3 hour drive when I pick up and I'm pumped about making the drive (even at low RPM's). If you can work out the details, it would be worth the time.
TC

 

I subscribe to the break it in strong with varying speeds up and down the entire RPM range philosophy. I haven't been let down yet. Broken in from new; 2 ZX-7's, 1 Goldwing 1500, 2 aircooled Buells, 1 RZ350, 3 RD400's and a GS1100E, plus 2 MINI's and 2 Passats and a Jetta, not an oil-burner in any of them, except for 2-stroke oil in the RZ and RDs.

 

Good to hear CD, I think I found that link on one of your posts. What worries me though is reading on here somewhere, I believe it is in the thread "Things you didn't know about your MINI", that the dealer can tell everything about your driving from the computer memory. Like how fast it has gone, how many times on and off... I wonder if it logs the date and time of all these events? Just thinking about warranty with this one too.

 

I think if you don't MOD the car, they would have a real hard time not warranteeing it because they claim you broke it in wrong, otherwise they would be obligated to break in all the motors for each of us before they sold the car to us and that isn't going to happen. Why is there a rev-limiter if the TRUE rev-range is 2.5K lower, heh?

 

I am OLD SCHOOL, like your DAD. I watched a race mechanic rebuild a Yamaha TZ750 between qualifying and race day, as soon as he put it back together he warmed it up for a few minutes, then he reached over and pegged the redline at 15 to 16 K. Everyone in the room just about fainted. He turned it off, saw all of us staring with 'dropped jaws' and calmly said, "that's how I know if I put it together right." DON"T be a WEENIE with your MINI.

 

I thought you were only supposed to do that on the road or under a load somehow, not just revving.

My dad used to drag race a 57 corvette at a track (and off) and only lost once and it was to a girl!!!

edit: Or that's the way he tells it anyway

 

Bottom line, they are all just gasoline internal combustion motors, they have to be tuned with a laptop and a dyno now, but the principles are still the same, it ain't nuclear physics. Break it in however YOU see fit. The pressure on the rings seems to make a lot of sense, but remember how much he says happens in the first 20 to 100 miles, that is literally millions of rev cycles, so I tend to believe him. I don't hold the motor WTO like the TZ mechanic did but I do bounce it up and down off the rev limiter, lots of downshifts too.

 

Nothing in a proper breakin is contrary to what Mini publishes. You aren't going to run it over 4500 rpm and you aren't going to go faster than about 50-70 either. What you do need to do is immediately after warming up the engine after driving off the lot, is to put it under several ring seating hard pulls and then let off and coast some, then do another pull. We are talking part throttle in second or third gear and when you get to 4500, you let off and coast in gear for a little while.. You do this about 20 times in the first 20 miles and you are set. Then just drive at varying speeds in all the gears and follow the 4500/90 rule for the next 1000 miles. Also get that oil out of there.

 

Oh yeah, I plan on that. Anyone ever put rare earth magnets on their oil filter? I heard this keeps the metal in there and doesn't let it recirculate. No substitute for a change of course.

Thanks you guys, I'm really glad I asked about this 'cause I plan on keeping this car as long as possible!

 

Here is something that a lot of people don't realize. The oil pump picks up motor oil from the oil pan and pumps it to a lot of different places, the cam, the crankshaft, the timing chain, and the oil filter. The oil filter is just one branch, like branches on a tree where the oil gets pumped. All of the oil does not get pumped through the oil filter and then sent to all the engine parts. In theory, some of the oil may never get sent through the filter... this is not reality, all of the oil will eventually get sent through the filter, but not always immediately.

Now here is where a bunch of people will jump all over me, but I don't care. Many people have stated that the BMW engineers know best and if they say run 5W30 for 10-15K miles then that is exactly what they will do.

The reason they recommend 5W oil is because using 5W oil will give you about 0.5% better gas mileage and they want their corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) ratings to be higher. The reason they say don't change the oil for 10-15K miles is that they are trying to get good EPA ratings in the product life cycle pollution ratings. This is where every manufacturer must specify just how pollution their product will put into the environment over the life cycle of the product. In the case of a car, it is not only the exhaust emissions, it is how many tires, how many gallons of antifreeze (hence 5 year antifreeze) and also how many oil filters and quarts of motor oil.... so the manufacturers now extend those drain intervals, not in the interest of the engine lasting longer, but to gain those ISO 14000 points.

YD

 

WOW, that's pretty interesting.

 

Not necessarily true, especially as ECUs become more sophisticated. I believe, for example, MTH and others have not yet hacked the 06 ECU.

Lotus, for example, mandates an ECU dump at 1000 miles. It has a complete breakdown of EVERY RPM turned and for how long. Take a look at some of the dumps on elisetalk as people have claimed warranty being denied or threatened to be denied for not following the break-in instructions. Similar Porsche has the same thing. While not the extensive dump as Lotus, they know exactly how many times and for how long you ran each RPM. I would expect, perhaps the 07 on MINIs may due the same thing (or not).

The first part is very true. For example, Toyota has JUST went to 0W-20 oil on their four bangers to get a bit better gas mileage. I didn't even know they sold 0W-20!

As to the 10-15K mile oil changes, I heard different in that its simply money. They give you free maintenaince. On their nichel they go the length of the synthetic oil. Out of warranty, they dont care.

 

I'd say it's the same as the oil and maintenance contracts, they have a say there because they do offer free service for 36K. If they want to deny warranty coverage for improper break-in, I believe they are then obligated to deliver the cars already broken-in. That would be my legal position, and I think it would stand up. You might want to let the other boards use this reasoning in denied warranty claims. Can you cite to a owner that has been denied warranty coverage for improper break-in, or is it a threat that is being tossed around?

 

My MINI is ready, I think I am going to pick it up myself tomorrow. After reading the stuff about break-in, I don't think the delivery person would hurt it by driving it hard but what they may do to conserve time is just get on I-40 and cruise at 75 which I don't want. I will probably take an alternate route that will vary speeds more but take longer which I doubt they would do.