I've got about 520-ish miles on my 07 500R so far. The stickers say 0-500 miles no more than 4k rpm, and 500-1k miles no more than 6k rpm.

Well now that I can do 6k, its a lot more fun. My question is, do I really have to wait another 500 miles to use the rest of the rev range? A friend told me (who attends Wyotech) that its not necessary. Whats the real deal? Thanks!

-Jeff

 

You'll get lots of people who say "Break it in hard", but are these people the ones who designed and built your engine? Do they know the properties of the alloys used in your cylinder walls and piston rings? Are they the ones stuck with an oil-burning engine with no compression that wore out prematurely because of their own bad-advice?

The next 480 miles will go by MUCH faster now that you don't have to keep your bike below 50mph and your eye glued to the tach. I counsel patience and following KHI's advice.
Good luck and have fun.
Pece!
-CCinC

 

Ok thanks. I think I'll go burn off a hundred miles tonight

 

if u think u'll move on to another bike in a year, it dont really matter.

 

Ouch, sounds like you care for your bike as you do your garbage from that statement.

 

Quotes like that always seem to resonate whenever I'm in the market and considering a used bike.

For Sale: used R6, 2002 blue, adult-owned & maintained. Garage-kept and babied.
(Then again, what's the first thing we do with newborn babies? Hang them upside down by their feet and slap them hard on the @$$.)

 

Wouldn't you keep the 500 along with your new bike?

 

I'd follow the manufacturer's break-in specs. Although those websites claim most of the break-in is done in the first 100 miles I beg to differ. The piston rings may be seated by that time, but the heat cycling of the metal components within the engine is what the break-in is for.

A better picture may be taken from the example of metalworking. Forging requires heat cycling before the metal is hardened. The metal is heated up and worked on, then allowed to cool completely, compressing the particles. This is done over and over again to compress the atoms tighter and tighter together.

If you rode the bike straight for 1000 miles without shutting it down to cool completely, I guarantee that it will not be fully broken in as the metal components will not have completed even 1 heat cycle. The rings may be seated, but the pistons are no harder than they were at 0 miles for this particular bike.

 

Here's an illuminating article by the late-great Gordon Jennings I copied from May '98 issue of Motorcyclist:
The Break-In Game
Two questions have plagued my life as a motojournalist: The first is, "I'm thinking of getting a motorcycle. What shall I buy?" Then comes the second: "How should I break in my new motorcycle?" No satisfactory answer exists for the first question, as preference in such matter is so individual. I don't know anyone well enough to choose a motorcycle for them.

Giving break-in advice is much less dangerous and it's more in my line of work. I believe I can add to the scanty information provided by most owner's manuals. These manuals typically admonish owners to keep engine speed below a certain level and/or refrain from using full throttle. They don't say why the limits are necessary, or what damage might result from non-compliance.

Fortunately for all of us, motorcycle manufacturers have done a lot to solve the special problems of parts beginning life in service. Their built-in solutions to those problems are so good your new bike's moving parts will settle into peaceful coexistence without much help from you, as speed crazed motojournalists know from long, shameful experience.

New motorcycles delivered into the unkind hands of magazine test riders get no help at all. Careful break-in for most magazine test bikes means no wide-open, red-line running until there are three digits [if that—Ed.] showing on the odometer. That is not a good procedure to follow with a new motorcycle you own and will have to repair if it breaks. But, the fact that 30-plus years of new models have survived magazine guys' abuse speaks volumes for motorcycles' quality. For the purposes of discussion, I'm going to assume you'd prefer to ease your new motorcycle through its break-in period undamaged. Your best chance of attaining this goal lies in understanding what's happening during those crucial first 500 to 1000 miles.

The tenderest of all new or newly rebuilt engine's tender points is at the scrubbing contacts between rings and cylinder bores. Actually, it's the top compression ring that gets the big load because it uses pressure on the upper cylinder for its sealing action. Gas pressure above the piston pushes the compression ring down against the bottom of its groove and out against the cylinder wall. With gas pressure in the upper cylinder at 500 pounds per square inch or even more at part throttle, the load on the oil film separating ring and cylinder wall is also 500psi. If the ring gets past the oil and into direct contact with the cylinder, friction heating will cause melting at the contact point. What happens next with plain iron rings is that a tiny bead of melted metal from the cylinder becomes welded to the ring's contact face. The bead, traveling with the ring, then picks up more metal from the cylinder until it grows too large and breaks away from the ring. Once this separation occurs, the built-up metal particle scores the piston skirt before migrating down to the crankcase, where it does more damage until captured by the oil strainer. Advances in piston ring technology remove most of the dangers from the break-in period. Today's new engines have their top rings faced with chromium or molybdenum, metals that do not readily friction-weld to an iron cylinder wall. The worst you get from a chrome- or moly-coated ring scrubbing roughness from the cast-iron cylinder bore are some small scratches.

Cast iron, of the kind used in cylinders, has a porous microstructure that readily wets with oil and then retains it fairly well. It has the further advantage of containing numerous small graphite particles, which are themselves a lubricant. Despite these favorable factors it is still necessary to finish the cylinder bore with a relatively coarse-stone hone moved up and down as it spins to make cross-hatched scratches, which hold oil on the cylinder walls and help control oil consumption.

When you're building a racing engine you can finish-hone the bores to be so smooth they don't need a breaking-in. You can't do that in street-engines, as the smooth bores would soon become polished, and a little roughness is required for oil control. The small volume of gases cross-hatching leaks past the compression ring, moves oil down to the oil ring, then blows it through the oil return holes to the crankcase. In my racing days, I attempted to raise an engine's compression ratio by heli-arc welding more aluminum to the pistons' crowns. I tested the concept on an old piston, one I carefully measured before adding metal and was gratified to find negligible distortion after the welding. Alas, when I performed the same operation on a new piston it distorted so much down at the skirt as to be utterly unusable.

On a hunch, I placed an old piston and a new one on a tray and slid them into a 500-degree F oven, leaving them in for 30 minutes. The old piston came out of the oven just as it had gone in, but the new piston was badly warped. I should have anticipated this, as complex castings and forgings like pistons end up with a lot of locked-in stresses by the time the manufacturing process is completed. A new piston's internal stresses are relaxed by heating, and if this occurs with the piston in an oven, but otherwise unrestrained, the metal squirms like mad and ends up distorted. The same piston, closely confined in a cylinder, will take on a shape much better suited to its surroundings. It is not surprising that this should be the case, as even after break-in the pistons in a running engine are a light-interference fit in their bores. Only the oil film between them and cylinders' walls prevents seizing.

Given time, your new motorcycle's pistons will adjust to life of whizzing up and down in cylinders. Heating will relax the locked-in stresses, and confinement will keep them from warping into aluminum pretzels. Repeated cycles of heating and cooling, as occur when you ride your new motorcycle and then park it for the night, work the pistons into shape, but they have to be treated with consideration while still new and nervous. If you pay heed to the advice given in your owner's manual, those pistons will settle in without having their skirts scuffed or distorted. The rings will appreciate it, too, and if you treat your new motorcycle with enough consideration to keep the pistons and rings healthy, you won't do any damage to other vulnerable bits, like bearings, gears, and cam followers. You'll avoid post-break-in engine damage by avoiding a couple of things too many riders have made habit. Do not ever, ever zing a cold engine up to high revs, as this will pound in the pistons' skirts before you can moan "engine rebuild." The other bad habit is the lengthy warm-up, which just prolongs the period in which acids condense on cold cylinder walls and eat at everything. Fire it up, ride away just be gentle with it until it's warm and ready to roar.

One last thing: Give yourself a little time to become accustomed to that new motorcycle. There's nothing more depressing than throwing your brand-new bike down the road.

–Gordon Jennings

 

great article. I see so many threads being created questioning the manufacturer's break-in instructions written by people who have no credentials. This article addresses without any ambiguity the validity of following the factory break-in instructions.