Almost finish with my engine build that I put in a 2011 6.7l. It is basically 17-19 short block and heads. Everything is new but the turbo(15+),cp4(15+) & the upper oil pan, kept it because of the gasket vs rtv. I understand no towing for first 1000 miles and basically drive it around town the first 500.
I was going to use rotella t6 5w40 or should I use motorcraft 15w40. Should I use a fuel additive like arch oil during the break in period given my cp4 is a year and a half old. Ford says no friction modifier. Any suggestions for starting and running a brand new engine in an old truck are welcome.

 

The no towing recommendation is necessarily for the engine, it is for the read diff gears to mesh before putting a load on.

 

What would a safe mileage on the engine be in order to tow. I tow every day.

 

Use motorcraft 10w30 or 5w40

No additives needed


see what you can do to prevent a dry start, inject oil, etc

 

It's all put together and enclosed. Isquirted oil on everything I could, brushed the cylinder walls and soaked the lifters in oil. Is there anything else I can do.

 

You can remove either the oil pressure switch or oil temp switch and use a giant surynge to pump oil into a very large ca it’s that will take a few seconds to pull oil up from the pan.

 

Great insight thanks

 

 

If you have one of these you can prime the oil system pretty easy and fill the cavities Dave is talking about.

you can even use a tee fitting and leave the sensor in and connect the hose to the new port and set this to dispense and you will quickly have 10 qts coming into the pump .

 

Or for 9 bucks you can use this 1/2 litter surynge.

 

Definitely see if you can rent or borrow an oil priming unit. You need to add roughly 3 quarts of oil beyond the 13 quarts of an oil change. The pan alone has capacity for at least 2 quarts, and not the sump, but the oil passages. On distributor driven oil pumps, I used to use a drill to prime the engine and would add oil as needed, but you can't do that with this engine. You want to build up pressure in the oil system prior to starting so no parts are dry or become dry. What I usually did prior to a start is to crank without fuel until the oil pressure builds after a prime, this guarantees the filter is full and all the passages have oil. Then I let the fuel flow.

Use conventional oil for the break in period, Synthetics have been known to interfere with ring seating due to its slickness, you will wind up changing it within 500 miles anyway.

Let the truck idle at around 1000 RPM to bring the temperature up before driving it, never do a break in drive on a cold new engine or parts will break. You could drive it carefully, to reach temp, but by the time you have the coolant topped off and all leak checks done, it should be at temp.

You want to force the rings against the cylinder walls and from low RPM to mid RPM, WOT so floor it from 800 RPM to about 1600-1800 RPM then foot off the pedal and slow down to a crawl, repeat 15-20 times, best if you can do it up hill. Then you want to do it again but from 1800 to 3000 RPM another 15-20 times. This should give enough cylinder pressures to force the rings against the cross hatch and scrub the rings to a tight seal.

Drive like normal after this and change the oil to your preferred brand of synthetic or semi synthetic. For the first oil change I would use the recommended viscosity Motorcraft semi synthetic, the second change, use whatever you want, everything at this point should be well seated.