I guess that's why my ATV smokes and uses more oil than it does gasoline?

 

Well put Dark. I don't load up a new engine. Just like to have it run through the rev range from the start. The guy at Kawasaki said to me when I purchased the Z, "best way to run it in mate is go to a track day and enjoy. Then bring it here to dump the oil". I would have if there was a track day on but made my own track in the hills of Adelaide....Don't think I would go that far as I do believe that heat cycles are a big part of running in but we wont go there....

 

When I was at the dealership we put a lot of new bikes on the dyno and we never saw a problem. Lack of oil/filter air filter maintenance caused a lot of problems.

My Z was on the dyno with less then 100 miles on it.

 

I've read a lot on hard break ins and its all been really interesting. I don't break in easy, but I try to keep it reasonable. The other reason I didn't go nuts is because this is my first liter bike so it was breaking me in too.

 

I'm surprised we dont have someone, on the entire internet, who has not built two identical enginesand broke one in easy, the other hard, just to see if there was a difference.

I know nothing can be truly identical, but I wish someoen would.

I built up way to man Honda cr85, two stroke , motors. The oen thing that helped them make better power was building the top end dry vs lubricating the heck out of it. My 12 year old rider could tell the difference, and I tried it four times. I rebuilt his engines every two weeks. Visually you could see a lot less smoke, and the compression tester showed a difference. Break in? Very hard to do when the pistons life expectancy is 8-10 hours. I felt like we got abetter ring seal when buildign dry. Many of th etop four stroke builders will go to the point of cleaning all parts with brake cleaner, then kicking the engine over 50 times before it starts, or sees lubrication. I saw one guy do this and his motors were National level fast.

Also, we have to talk about "easy". In riding terms, this means something like never exceeding 5000 rpm's.

So, riding around at 3500rpm is easy. That means any one given piston is rotating 58 complete revolutions, per second, unless I've messed up a simple 3500 (rpm) to 58 (rps).

In this regard, does the engine ever "see" or "feel" easy?

 

I'm surprised we dont have someone, on the entire internet, who has not built two identical enginesand broke one in easy, the other hard, just to see if there was a difference.

I know nothing can be truly identical, but I wish someoen would.

I remember seeing one article of a guy who built inline 4 racing engines for sportbikes and he showed a side by side comparison of one that was broken in hard vs easy. The one broken in hard was much better looking internally after a full season of riding.

 

I've only gotten mine up to 125 and that's right after the bike hit 500 miles mark and there was a stretch of straight road in front of me.. haven't got the chance to go out and push the bike hard yet but I'm happy with the bike's top end, if I was after top speed I would've gotten the zx-10r or something, but low-end torque and mid-range is what makes me giggle and this is the best bike for that haha.

 

I've always believed in "ride it like you stole it" for break in... never had a problem.... granted I'm not talking red line all the time, but if you get on it there shouldn't be a problem...

3B

 

Yep, I intend to break mine in hard. Up to redline and let it spin back down on it's own, then back up to redline, spin it back down.....

 

I saw this post and wanted to send a short reply. I have an 05 Z and my bike has -1 off the rear sprocket ........ bike still pulls good in mid range for sure and will help with little higher top end. I bought the bike this way and I'm going to leave it geared this way. This maybe what you are looking for.