Fredvon4 -

As I stated earlier, I wasn't treating this truck as "someone else's property" - I was seriously thinking of buying this truck, and I'm certainly not going to buy a vehicle that I haven't properly test-driven. What would I gain from a test-drive if I never took the motor above 2,000rpm?

As far as the engine break-in, much of what you wrote agrees with what I stated in my post...so I don't see a contradiction there. Plus, there are completely different methods for breaking in a brand-new engine versus breaking in one that was rebuilt or remanufactured - and most mechanics are going to be more familiar with the method for breaking in rebuilt engines. On a rebuilt engine you have to worry much more about excess heat & glazing the rings than you have to on a factory-new engine, especially an engine produced with modern manufacturing processes.

Plus, unless they've changed things recently Ford puts new engines on a load cell and runs them up to high RPMs (at or near redline) - so the engine in your new truck has probably already experienced something very similar to what I did on my test-drive. As far as oil-burning goes, in my experience modern trucks that consume oil are more likely to have been broken in gently than to have been broken in by the technique I describe. However, the opposite is often true of engines produced 25 years ago - on engines produced in the '70s or earlier, often the rings would get too hot when broken in using my method and then would never seat properly. This is one of the reasons that the "gentle break-in" method became so prevalent...but it doesn't necessarily apply to modern engines. I've owned a lot of vehicles - dating back to the '40s - and there have been dramatic changes in manufacturing methods and tolerances over that time, and these changes have affected the break-in procedure.

As far as my own truck, I go 5,000 miles between changes on my '04 using the Motorcraft 5w-20 oil - and it doesn't use a drop between changes, or at least not enough that it's visible on the stick. The truck just turned over 30,000 miles, as I drive about 40,000 miles a year...the oil companies love me. So far, my best mileage is about 15mpg - which isn't bad for a crewcab 4x4 with 4.30 gears. Right now I'm getting 12-13mpg in mixed driving, though it'll drop now that it is getting colder (got my first frost Saturday night).

There is a lot of advice on the internet, and some of it is accurate...but much of it is not, and it can sometimes be difficult to separate fact from fiction. I didn't mean to be rude in my prior post, as I generally am not like that - but I found your reaction to my post rather annoying and condescending, which is one of my pet peeves. Basically, we have a simple difference of opinion and I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I didn't post in order to try to trash the new Superduty - especially since a portion of my company's success depends on it - and I also wasn't taking a "joy ride" and abusing the truck, as my next truck will undoubtedly be another Superduty. All I was doing was expressing my first impression of a production Superduty with the V10.

LK

 

I guess it is my faulty break-in techniques which cause my V-10 to use a quart every 5,000 miles... Just think, Ford told me it was good even if it uses a quart every 1,000-1,500 miles!

I could blame the "test-driver" who drove it before I bought the truck, but after the previous posts I'm not sure if I should blame the heavy-footed or light-footed guy.

OBTW, did we ever find the dyno charts the original poster requested?

Edmo

 

Nope, still looking for them.

 

LK

I can see your point of view and I do agree that Ford and other manufactures probably do a OK job of "running in" the new motors.

In fact I know that they take every new truck through a series of tests at the end of the production line. One of the tests is on a chassis dyno. I am sure they do NOT do a max rpm run but they do run it hard enough to do the ABS tests and EPA noise tests. This suggests they run it up to or slightly higher than 3000RPM. And I am mindful of Daryl Waltrip test driving a New Toyota Truck on the commmrcial seems to be a max RPM demonstration.

I guess I got hot mostly because the last several weeks I have detected a higher than normal bunch of folks who modify their trucks, then beat the hell out of it, then when something breaks they cry "Ford sucks" or "sure hope Ford will warranty my broke trany" or demonstrate some other form of not taking personal responsibility.

My post was condescending and rude and I wish I had spent more time on the first post to get my point out without deliberately attacking you.

So now I would like to respectfully ask you to consider several thoughts of mine in an attempt to convince you that your method my be not in your best interests. Especially since you insist on seeing how fast or other performance tests during a "test drive".

You know where I stand on the ring break-in.

Here are a few facts to consider:

As good as they have gotten in the last decade, the American manufactures still have poor quality control with machined parts and multipart assemblys. Consider thah a hole bored in a block at 3 inches can have up to +/- .055" and still be within spec. A piston can have similar +/- tolerance and still be "in spec". These wide tolarances are applied to many of our "clearance fit" assemblies. Crank, rods, cams, main shafts blah blah blah you get the idea.

These wide variances can result in engine assemblies that have one or more components that have extremes of either tolerance. A larger piston can be put in a small hole. A small rod journal on a large crank or tight bearing.

Can you see that it is possible to have one or more piston already running on the tight side and all others are right in the middle or even slightly loose?

If you think I am full of crap I challenge you to take a caliper and a micrometer or two to your favorite Ford parts supplier and measure a set of pistons and three different cam shafts. You will be amazed at the lack of consistency with theses parts and it drives us "blue printers" nuts trying to balance every part to the same weight and dimensions.

Note in my other posts I spent a lot of time with the notion that these assemblies need to go through many "heat cycles". These expansion and contraction cycles help to "clearance" any of the slightly tight clearances and also are damn important in "stress relieving" many of the parts.

If you consider how many of these clearance fit parts there are in the V10 motor, transmission, transfer case, drive line, and rear ends, you can start to see that it is possible to damage one or more of these parts if they are "stressed" before they have had a chance to clearance them selves.

A rod journal bearing can superheat and gall in just a few seconds but take years to finally fail. One set of rings that gets too hot too fast and fails to seat will not be detectable for many months or years. Both of these failures will not greatly impact oil consumption or cause any noticeable noises for a long time. I rebuilt a Ford 289 once that had one factory piston without a second groove ring. None was ever installed by Ford and I was the single owner. That motor ran just fine for over 65K miles before I decided to rebuild and blueprint it.

As a last shot at why it is important to follow the manufactures recommendations here is a little known fact. All our new trucks for a few years now have a black box in them that can be down loaded by Ford and the insurance companies, but not by you.

This box was important to me after my recent destruction of the 01 SuperDuty in a single car accident in a Pine Tree at 65mph. The black box reported my terminal velocity, steering wheel position, time of impact, ABS status, brake pedal position, throttle position, air bag deployment and duration, gear selection, trans line pressure, torque converter status, 4x4 status, and about a dozer other minor things like most of the OBDII diagnostic, things such as O2 heater and current reading etc.

Here was the surprising thing. They were able to down load the last 30 min of the trip. I can not find out exactly how many minutes the "black box" records but I know my insurance company checked the last 30 minuets. This saved my butt because the trend is to deny claims if there is evidence of hot rodding, racing, or other indicators that the vehicle was not in "compliance".

I was also there at the salvage yard when the adjuster/investigator inspected the truck and his clipboard had a long list of check boxes. Many on the first page related to "owner modifications" ( lift, tires, exhaust etc). I had several conversations with the adjuster and could not get him to definitivley state if those modifications were claim denial factors. He kept with the company line that he was just the investigator and did not make decisions on any claim.

Bottom line is that in today's high cost market, the manufacture and the insurance companies are determined to not pay claims or do warranty repair where there is evidence of abuse, misconduct, modification or some combination of all factors. and They are armed with the ability to factually determine some of this information.

I believe that if I had lifted my truck 8", had tires too large for the rims, installed a chip, and then wrecked my truck. That my insurance company would determine that the increased HP, out of tolerance tires, and too high center of gravity were factors in my loosing control, leaving the highway and smacking the tree. Instead of getting a $7600.00 check, I could have been left with paying off $26,000 on the truck and been on foot for a long time.

To tell the truth I don't blame them for defending their companies. I see too much evidence of fraud right here on these forums and in my daily life. Everybody seems to think screwing the big company is their right and they never stop to accept personal responsibility for their own actions. And ultimately we the consumers are the folks who get screwed by the higher cost of insurance, and vehicle prices.

Curious that Gale Banks will tell you that his Ottomind will increase line preasures and "enhance" the shift points of the trans. He will further state that this will not void you Ford warranty. But he will not say that if your tranny craps out he will repair/relpace it. Things that make me think and wonder is all.

 

That should confirm one's opinion of a certain corporate backed, long winded, know all, you don't know anything compared to me Texan, huh LK? Good luck and my hats off to you for "daring to challenge." Love to hear more of your opinions if allowed.

 

I too have seen where owners of trucks add aftermarket parts, beat the crap out of the truck and expect the OEM to repair it. I agree 100% with this statement.

The second paragraph is one reason why I ordered my truck from the factory and requested that after arriving at the dealer, no one was to "test drive" my truck, otherwise I might refuse delivery of it. I've heard of too many horror stories of "road tests" done by "prospective buyers" to want a stock item from the dealer's lot. I also break my truck in without achieving max RPM and only using full throttle for brief periods until I have about 1000-1500 miles. Must work for me, my 390 powered 75 and my 460 powered 87 both had over 200k without rebuild.

 

well I know this has nothing to with a graph but in sept 96 i test drove several 97 wranglers and yes i ran the stuff out of each one till i found one in huntington west virginia it ran really great i mean really fast ( for a six banger) i drove it a few months and it developed a drivline vibration they could not find so to make a long story short they ordered me another jeep exactly like the first one, well , that thing was so slow and completely differant than the other jeeps i had to trade the dam thing in what im gettin at is you have to test drive a vehicle like you drive or you may as well mail order your cars or trucks

 

On this topic you and I are in complete agreement - Ford is not responsible when people push their trucks beyond the design parameters, and people should not fault Ford if/when they fail. My company gets warranty claims all the time where it was obvious that the parts in question were abused...and Ford usually passes the cost of these repairs on to us, because it's easier for them to blame a supplier than to refuse to back the warranty claim. I can think of several instances where this cost us quite a bit of money, and Ford has this annoying habit of simply not paying us for shipments when they feel our quality isn't up to par. Even when we're able to prove that we're not at fault, we generally never get that money back...and the total is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And yes, I do see your point with the engine break-in...but I don't completely agree with it. One of the problems is that the engineers (including me) set initial tolerances based on tolerance stackups, computer simulations & modeling, FEA, that sort of thing...but often those initial tolerances are modified, either because of production cost or because the suppliers simply can't hold their process under that tight of control. Or, the quality engineers just sign off on the whole thing and the parts are simply not made within spec. Heck, there are lines where we've never made a single part that was to print (our local slang term for being within spec) - even though they've been in production several years.

So, I know about the quality issues and product variation...and a lot of that, if not most of that, is caused by decisions made by Ford executives. To be blunt, the problem is that they won't pay their suppliers enough to get quality parts - and the only way we can make any profit is to either cut corners or to outsource most of the work overseas. Our tooling for Ford is made almost entirely overseas now - most of it in Korea - and many of our purchased components come from India, Korea, or even China. This has caused numerous quality problems, and when we do find problems it can take a long time to get them resolved - often we end up sending engineers overseas to fix the problems at the source.

So, actually I'm in an odd position - my company relies on Ford for a portion of our income, and I've been a Ford owner for many years...but at the same time I'm annoyed with Ford for forcing us to cut corners (and cut quality) in order to keep their business. For the past few years, Ford has been consistently rated the most difficult automaker for suppliers to work with...and Ford needs to wake up before it's too late, because if they don't have good suppliers they won't produce good vehicles.

Anyway, I wandered off-topic for a minute there.

For engine break-in, the owner's manual on my 2004 states

"Your vehicle does not need an extensive break-in. Try not to drive continuously at the same speed for the first 1,600 km (1,000 miles) of new vehicle operation. Vary your speed to allow parts to adjust themselves to other parts.

Drive your new vehicle for at least 8000 km (500 miles) before towing a trailer or snowplowing."

I like the "allow parts to adjust themselves to other parts" statement - very technical.

Anyway, it doesn't state to avoid high RPMs or to avoid full-throttle (or nearly full-throttle) acceleration - so technically doing that doesn't violate any Ford recommendations. The avoiding trailer towing is probably the one that's most often violated, and one of the the primary reasons for that relates to the break-in on the rear axle. Some folks here have found that one out for themselves - start towing too early, and your axle won't last very long. My personal recommendation is not to tow for 1,000 miles - and then when you do tow, only tow for short trips at first. The snowplowing limitation relates to a few different components, but the transmission is probably #1 on the list.

One thing that I forgot to to mention is that Ford doesn't list a special oil-change schedule for a new vehicle - and IMHO that's a big mistake. The initial fill of oil should be changed before 1,000 miles, and preferably closer to 500 miles - leaving that oil in for 5,000 miles isn't a good idea. When I first changed the oil in my '04, I sent it in for oil analysis and posted the results on the Oil & Lubrication board - and from those results you can see quite a bit of contamination, enough to indicate that running it a longer time would possibly harm the engine. I really think Ford needs to change their recommendations, but I sort of doubt that will happen.

Here's a link to my UOA on my initial oil fill at 1,200 miles (I wanted to change it earlier, but was out of town and wasn't able to).

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...d.php?t=180206

LK

 

LK great post and I think we are more than 90% in agreement on this subject. I have very distinct break-in procedures for my race engines vs. my personal vehicles.

Oil and filter are very inexpensive vs. risking initial startup wear and the eventual short lifespan of the engine by keeping the initial oil past 500 miles.

And the towing note is also telling, many folks do not understand the dynamics of a LS or open differential and neglect proper break-in here also.

As an engineer maybe you could post a new topic one day about the practical changes that have been made to the nodular iron and alloys in modern ring and pinon sets, the torques applied on the face in forward vs. the heel or toe in reverse and your thoughts on coast, vs compression loads on the LS unit and carrier brarings.

I would agree that there is an argument to be made either way on max speed or high rpm within the first 50-500 miles but I still respectfully disagree with loading the engine with "potentially" damaging high piston speeds within the first 50 miles.

You sort of make my point simply because Ford and it's suppliers are NOT able to systematically maintain pure or consistant quality control on many of the clearence fit assemblys.

Any way I am glad you kept at the thread even though we never did find any dyno charts for RancheroRacer's opening topic line. Tis is an interesting forum and we frequently get off topic (my fault often) and I look forward to each day here.

Speaking of RancheroRacer, interesting User ID... did you notice in one of my posts that I drag race a 65 Falcon Ranchero with 289? What motor in the 71 a 351 Clevland ?

 

I don't have a 3V V10 dyno graph, sorry daryl. Feel free to check out my chassis dyno of my 4V V8 in my gallery though ...

What I did want to mention with regard to running in procedure.
In my cars owners manual (car equipped with a 5.4 mod motor, i.e. V10 missing 2 cylinders) it states, and I quote:

"Vehicle should be placed under load during first 3000km. Vehicle should also be used above 4000rpm for occasional use during first 3000km. If these actions are not performed during first 3000km, excessive oil consumption, and a lack of perfomance may result."

Also, AMG - Merc's high performance arm, run each engine that they manufacture on a bench dyno for 2 and 1/2 hours, 40mins of which is at full load/wide open throttle. Tell me that they don't know how to run in an engine

 

Man, that almost sounds like work...that's what I come here to avoid.

Seriously though, that's a good idea...perhaps I'll write something up when I get a chance. I'm trying to limit my internet use at work, since they've started monitoring how much time we spend on the 'net...though I still spend more time here than I should. Do they have a self-help group for that, like some sort of FTE addicts recovery program?

Big F350 - that's interesting info. I've heard from a few different folks that Ford's owner's manuals vary from country to country, including different fluid recommendations on identical vehicles sold in different countries...I'm not sure why they do that. From the few that I've seen, it appears that the manuals in the U.S. usually have less technical information than the manuals from other countries...maybe they want us to be forced to go back to the dealership for routine service. However, our manuals do have more warnings and 'caution' statements than any of the others...we're ahead there at least. I don't really need to be told 362 times that my truck doesn't handle like a car...if I couldn't figure that out for myself, I probably shouldn't be on the road in the first place. You mean that a 6+ foot tall, nearly 7,000 pound truck doesn't handle like a sports car? Gosh!

LK

 

BigF350

Apples and Oranges brother. You are qouting out of FPV (Ford Performance Vehicles) guide for your very specially built 4Valve 5.4.

FPV receives the blocks from Ford but all the internals on every engine they build is race blueprinted. The exact same thing with AMG they perfectly ballance and blueprint every engine by hand.

When you absolutly know with out any doubt that every piece and clearance is exactly as the engineers planed then it is OK to do high performance fast break-in proceedures.

Not so with a mass produced series of motors that can see very large swings in clearences and ballance.

Reminder for some of you motor heads. The rings you would buy for a race motor are NOT the same alloy as what is put in stock family car motors.

 

D'oh! I didn't see that BigF350 had a supercharged 4v Falcon...that would definitely explain the difference. Apparently next time I should look at people's profiles, instead of just looking at the 'location' listing on the corner of the post.

I dunno, Fredvon4, despite what I've said previously about supplier quality problems I still don't really agree with you on the clearance issue. Sometimes the specifications on the print aren't what they appear.

For example, in your prior post you stated a tolerance of +/- 0.055 on the piston diameter - which is pretty close, assuming that you're talking millimeters and not inches (Ford's prints are all in millimeters, they don't use the English system anymore for production vehicles). That's a little over two thousandths of an inch, which is pretty close to what we have for tolerance on similar parts, though some are as small as 0.02mm (or less than 1 thousandth of an inch).

Anyway, 25 or 30 years ago the way we would have met a tolerance like that was to occasionally pull a part off the line and measure it to see if it was within spec - probably using a micrometer or something similar. If it was within spec, than we let the line run and checked another part in an hour or so, or maybe even at the end of the shift.

Nowdays, most dimensions like that are called out as "critical characteristics", or "special characteristics" depending on the automaker. On the drawing we note those with a special symbol - diamond, triangle, pentagon, it depends on the customer. Anyway, on those dimensions we have to demonstrate process capability - basically show that our process is under control and will not make any parts (or a very very small percentage of parts) that don't meet the print specifications. In order to meet the specifications for Ford, we sample a large number of parts and need to show a variation of less than half the print tolerance - or, in this case, +/- .0275mm or approximately +/- 0.001". Plus, Ford has started new statistical initiatives like the 6-sigma program - and when that is all fully in place, the actual part variation will be closer to 1/3rd of the print tolerance (or less). These numbers are approximate, as the true capability is measured in Cpk - which is too complicated to explain here.

Once process capability is proven, we run control charts on the process so that we can monitor it and detect any problems before we produce bad parts - and if we have any parts we have a problem with, we quarantine them so that they can't reach the customer. You see, while I'll admit that our suppliers have quality problems and we sometimes have to fudge the paperwork a bit, we'd never do anything like that on a critical characteristic or any other specification that could potentially cause a failure in the field. If that happens, and Ford needs to shut down their line, our company gets fined for every minute that the line is shut down - and those fines can easily run into the millions of dollars. No auto supplier that wanted to stay in business would ever knowingly produce parts that could cause a recall or production line stoppage - the risk is just too great, and we'll usually bring in people to sort every individual part by hand before we'd ship them to our customer. Actually, sorting by hand is pretty routine - we actually employ an inspection service, and there are always several of their employees on-site sorting parts all day long. If we hear of a problem at the automaker, we'll send people there - including engineers and managers - to sort every single part before it enters a vehicle. Sometimes, depending on the product, we'll actually tear apart all the vehicles in the holding facility to look for defects before they're shipped. We have to do things like that to keep getting contracts from Ford, yet at the same time they are cutting costs to the point where we can no longer make a profit...it's not a good situation.

Okay, I wandered off-track again. Anyway, my point is that even if you had a specification today that was identical to a specification 25 or 30 years ago, modern quality control techniques would mean that the modern-day process would have *far* less variation than the older one. I have talked to engineers at other auto suppliers, some of which have claimed that their tolerances were so tight that their inspectors can't even touch the parts with their bare hands - because their body heat would cause the material to go out of spec. It used to be that you only saw tolerances like that certain aircraft components, but now we're starting to see some of the same tolerances in the auto industry. Also, now the domestic automakers all use GD&T (Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing) - which is an idea that traces much of its origin to Ford, and changes the whole ballgame. In fact, one of the guys at Ford responsible for its creation was Dennis Karl - who I actually worked with in the past, though I haven't seen him in a couple years.

Also, many people confuse an engine's 'clearances' with it's 'tolerances' - I've seen that more than a few times, especially when people are trying to explain the switch to 5w-20 motor oil. I'm sure you know this, because you build engines, but for the any other folks who may be confused:

Clearance - the distance between two mating parts, for example a piston and the bore. To be fussy about it, the true clearance is the distance between the MMC (maximum material condition) of the piston - or the largest it can be and be within spec - and the MMC of the bore, which is the smallest it can be and be within spec. That is the smallest amount of clearance those parts can ever have and be within spec, and if you use the LMC (least material condition) of the piston and bore you can calculate the largest amount of clearance there can be with both parts within spec. In theory you can design each part to match exactly at it's MMC state - what we call a line-to-line fit, or the gauge guys call SFNS (slip fit no shake) - but most of the time that's not a good idea for a variety of reasons. So, instead we have clearance.

Tolerance - The amount a part can vary from its nominal (design) dimension. For example, if a piston has a diameter of 3 inches +/- .002" it can vary from 2.998" to 3.002" and still be within tolerance. The total amount of tolerance would be .004", though in reality the parts wouldn't vary that much for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

I've heard it said that they are using thinner oil now because the tolerances are tighter - but in this case the correct term would be clearances. However, as your process is controlled better you can decrease the tolerance - and once you decrease the tolerance you can decrease the clearance to some extent, particularly at LMC.

However, in this case the thinner oil relates primarily to fuel mileage - so it isn't the clearance or the tolerance.

Okay, I've wandered way off-topic and probably bored most of the folks on this board to death...and I still don't have a dyno chart on the V10.

LK

 

Maybe I should split this thread into 1. The orginal question & those relevant answers and 2. all the great posts by LK & Fredvon after concerning engine break-in.

Whadya all think?

 

Sounds good to me. The engine break in topic is interesting, but I'm more interested in a set of dyno plots for an '05 V10 right now