found out today my 250 v10 came off the line and is in route and due here about the 14th, i have never been so up about a new vehicle in my life. guess the next 10 days are going to kill me . fred i did buy a box of depends just in case and a box of tissues for my mouth problem. any other advise before it gets here?

 

Captchas, you might want to practice gentle pushing with your right foot so when you drive your truck for the first time you don't burn rubber like I did. You are in for a sweet ride when your 3 valve V10 shows up. I am using mine for little 2 mile trips into town when I should be using my Honda Accord. I want to drive this thing every chance I get. Fred is right about a Zen like experience, but heck Fred is always right LOL. Good Luck with your new truck and speedy delivery, Wrench.

 

fred is never wrong! the military dos that to people, every one in the v10 area have helped make this one a very special one to go into retirement with.
a special thanks to every one for the advise.

 

Congratulations on your speedy build & delivery schedule, looks like you missed the plant furlough. I'm sure that will muck things up for a while.

 

Captchas, Retirement truck,eh, that's great. I have under 6 years before I retire and I was planning on getting one more new truck just before I pull the pin but I just might hang on to Babe if she turns out to be a winner. Get yourself a Fumoto oil drain valve for your new V10. I had one on my last truck and loved it. Nice clean oil changes and if you want to send off an oil sample its a cakewalk. I was able to use the bugshield off my 04 and I ordered a locking gas cap from my dealer. Helps deter theifs and vandals. Getting a few things together helps relieve the excitement of waiting for a new truck to arrive. Wrench.

 

thank you all again, i can not believe the time frame the dealer gave me a print out at 0900 today order went in and placed jan 10 ,built work week jan 31. 1 week later then first listed, shipped and due by feb 14 , 1 month 4 days if it hits as ford has it listed, the owner gave me this info and said he still has some spots left for rush trucks in his alotment.

 

Captain Charlie

As a dealership mechanic for 40 years you probably have the CORRECT jacks and stands, if not then get them! Lift the rear of the truck and while brand spanking new spray all the exposed metal parts underneath with good quality paint. I make all the knuckles black and the drive shafts red. Turn on key, shift to neutral, and release park brake. Have wife, friend, or someone turn one tire slowly wihil you spray the new drive shaft. Lasts several years if done from new. Water spray usually cleans it well. If you don't do this after 2 months you will see a rusty drive shaft (not a problem) that will tick you off just because it looks bad on a high dollar truck. You would be amazed at the Folks who think Ford provided my bright red drive shafts. Kinda like "curb appeal" when looking at houses. I have folks every week who I know will now "give Ford another look".

Thorougly inspect, by eye and touch, EVERY nut and bolt underneath the beast. On every new truck I have bought in the last 10 years there is always one or two loose fasteners. This is easy to do, gets you familiar with what is where and it is better that you find the simple stuff now rather than spending a trip to the dealer trying to chase a rattle or problem. I find electrical connectors that are mostly together but I push every one anyway and you will be supprised at the number that you will hear the FINAL CLICK telling you that they are NOW really latched and sealed.

I have posted it before and it always starts a opinion war but here are my ideas on "break in":

Many, Many, I say again M A N Y hot cold hot cycles are the best thing you can do for a new factory assembled motor. On start up try to teach yourself to get in, put in the key, turn to RUN and stop, put on seat belt while the computer boots, NOW turn the key to start, watch the lights and gauges and pay attention to the tachometer for a few seconds. The engine will settle back a few hundred RPM, NOW shift to drive and again pause a little with the brakes on. Release the parking brake (you do ALWAYS use the parking brake don't you).

Now spend some time training yourself to NOT turn the steering wheel UNLESS the truck is rolling. I trained myself this technique of steering many years ago and my front ends last years beyond what "normal people" get before ball joints and wheels bearings need replacing. Turning a power steering lock to lock while the vehicle is halted is a BAD thing teach yourself to NEVER do it! Same goes for turning all the way to the steering limit stops. Never ever continue to keep turning the wheel once the mechaincal stop is hit, in fact TRAIN yourself to ALWAYS back off a tad when you hear/feel the limit stop.

OK, Lets BED the brakes. You should do this emmediatly as you leave the dealer, in fact I do a lot of it in his lot (my dealers lot is big enough). Get up to 30mph and when safe do a very hard (not lockup or ABS starting) but very hard braking just shy of a full stop, as you feel the truck about to halt, let off and smoothly accelerate back to 25, 30 mph. Repeat this 4 or 5 times while looking for a clear parking lot or unused back road. Let about 3 or more minutes pass between hard braking series to let the rotors settle to the new temp. Do this in a place where you do NOT have to come to any complete stops with the brakes while the rotors are hot! We are deliberatly trying to get the rotors VERY hot.

Once you have a SAFE place to do some more of this, do another hard brake series and get out of it while still rolling as before, but this time just coast to a normal stop. Clear your rear and shift to reverse and get up to a fair clip and do a hard brake in reverse, but again NOT to a complete stop. Do this several times as far to the rear as you can in the selected place but try very hard to NOT bring the truck to a complete stop with the brakes pads holding the very hot rotor.

What we are doing here is "burnishing" the pads, and forcing very controlled and even heating to the rotors and attaching assemblys. There NO such thing as WARPED rotors... BUT there is a condition called material trasnsfer, caused by superheated PADs that leave some of their material on the rotor and causing them to pulsate due to the uneven surface.

For the first few days try to set up your stopping to NEVER bring you to a full stop with the pads HARD clamped to hot rotors. This is hard to do and do not ever forget safety for you and others. If you must bring the monster to a quick and complete stop as soon as you are stopped ease up on the brakes and try to creep if there is room.

Most of the first several days I try to set up stop lights so I have a good buffer between me and cars ahead, I brake fairly aggresivley and with a two car buffer ease up and roll out until one car buffer then slowly creep up to the car in front. Usually the light changes before I need to full stop. Not always but this method lets some cooling and no pad to rotor in fixed spot. Do this a couple of times during the first 100 miles and your brake pads and rotors will last a long time and stopping power will be greatly enhanced.

Do not be tempted to try and break in over a weekend with some sort of long trip just to build miles. The setting of the rings can be done in less than 500 miles and takes patientce. I must re-state Many, Many hot cold cycles are much better.

For the first 500 miles try to do town type driving. It is OK to be a little hot on the take off. Just refrain from spending ANY time at RPM above 3500 or below 1500 under load (lugging the motor). Deliberatly do trips "to the store" where you get her up to full operating temp and while "shopping" she will cool off. Do a LOT of frequent shopping. Don't get everything at the one Lowes or Autozone "in town". Cruise accross town to a buddies house, drink a beer while he is admiring you new ride. Think safety and drink a soda or two for another hour or so while the engine cools and you detox. Repeat for as many buddies as you have. Watch the drinking and driving, your truck can not give you enjoyment from a jail cell.

At least once every driving cycle and after fully up to operating temp, do one good strong take off from stop up to 3500rpm and throttle shift the 5R110 auto tranny. Throttle shifting is when you use enough foot to run the rpms to where you want them then lightly let up and feel the auto shift up, get back firmly on the foot until RPMs are back and continue this through the gears. Practice this with another vehicle to get the feel. After the 500 mile mark do not be afraid to do this up to 4200rpm on occasion. But try to never spin the motor past 3500 unless it is under power and emmediatly falls off back to lower rpm.

Cruise control is forbiden the first 500 miles! For the next 500 only occasionally to learn how it works and feels. After 1000 you can use it when ever you want.

At 500 miles replace the Factory Motorcraft FL820 and 5w20 with same and enjoy the next 500 miles increasing the drive cycles and shortening the cool cycles. I change oil at 1000 also but admit it is overkill, I just dig doing it and LOGGING it because the rest of the trucks life some other monkey is going to change my oil while I watch.

Every chance you get, pull into a large parking lot and AWAY from every body spend some time in reverse, and straight line 4x4 hi and low. Do NOT turn the truck while in 4X4 on dry ground, just straight forward and reverse.

All my Ford Gasoline motors always take 5 to 8 thousand miles to "break in" where the MPGs get best. Don't even start to be concerned with low mpg figures until she is fully loosened up. With a auto trans, transfer case, 4x4, big rear end, and lots of engine this takes time, be patient.

Train your self to always shut off the radio and heater/AC as part of your normal daily shut down procedures. Periodically change the heater and AC controls to "exercise" the various dampers and doors and modes. If you do this as an **** psychotic obsessive compulsive daily routine then the vacuume actuators will always work.

If you are like me and plan to wear out the factory tires before you switch to better ones consider rotating in the X pattern at the 500 and 1000 mile oil change. After that rotate X pattern evey normal oil change. The X pattern tire rotation puts a left front tire spinning forward on the right rear where it will now spin backwards. This pattern should only be done on NEW radial tires and not ever done on radial tires driven exclusivly in one direction since new and only rotated front to rear same side. Tires break in also and how you start it is how you should continue for life of the tire. Fords spare tires are always on el-cheapo steel wheels and I don't bother to get the spare into the rotation mix. UGLY!

Consider poking around town for the same Ford tires and rims. I found "take offs" at a local tire dealer so I got a second set of tires and rims for my 99 7.3PSD and created a rotation pattern for every oil change that let me get 5 years and 119,000 miles out of the 12 tires. When I sold her the two sets had enought life and the new owner just knew he was getting over on me because the truck had twelve good rims. PSSST I paid $50 each for the "take offs"!

 

fred woking on a pm to you

 

captchas, enjoy the anticipation. It's fun to have something so great to look forward to.

Fredvon4, gosh that is quite the routine! I'm not sure whether it makes you 1) a very thorough and educated truck owner or 2) if perhaps you should consider medication for your obsessive compulsive tendencies!

Seriously though, thanks for sharing (first time I have read your routine) -- I will surely try to implement some of your ideas when I get my new truck. One question for you though: if you were going to pick up your new truck at Jeff's upstate New York dealership, and you lived 500 miles away from that dealership, how would you drive that truck back to your house? That is the quandry I will be facing this spring. Would you plan it as a many-day trip with lots of stops to maximize those hot/cold/hot cycles? Or could you just try to be frequently varying your speed on the highway home?

Thanks again for raising my break-in knowledge and awareness.

 

scot
the i.s. is not the only home to nj maybe a back road trip into sussex county and the slower roads home to ?? good luck with her

 

Scott

Check out the map, go to library and check out Blue Highways by William Least Half Moon

Think about it. Every place in America has many ways to get there. As long as the adventure is part of the New Truck, make it truely an adventure for a two day trip and enjoy beautiful New York state and the many back road cafes and interesting little towns.

If you must get back to work in a hurry to pay for the neat truck, at least keep the cruise control off, vary the speed up to 65-70 and back down to 50-55. Every half hour ease back to under 40mph and speed up to 75mph as fast as she will do it without dropping to 3rd gear, then back off to 55-65. Stop at least every two hours and let the motor cool and rest.

Thousands of owners never ever pay any attention to break in and just drive it like a new car and most of the time, every thing is OK. Don't get too wrapped up in my overly **** methods. Do the brake "BEDDING" before the trip. Absolutly NO lugging under 1500rpm or any very hard high rpm (above 3500) hot starts. Never rev up a new motor in neutral with no load on it.

For the non-motor heads:

Break in does many many things to a new motor. The direct metal to metal wear parts have to mate themselves and wear down the slight machineing flaws.

In the case of the piston rings there are three sets. The top compression ring is slightly different from the second conpression ring and the bottom or third set is for oil control. The manufacturing process mates the pistons and rings in a cylinder that has been machined to have a specific clearence and pattern of wear for oil retension groves. We call the final process "honing" the cylinder. The fine grit flat stones that are spun in the cylinder leave very distinct peaks and valleys in the cylinder wall.

As the piston moves up and down in the new hole the rings (under outward spring tension) scrape against this cross hatch pattern of groves and slightly wear down the peaks depending on the amount of preassure of the expanding ring.

There is no mechanical way to make a ring exert the exact same amount of outward force around the entire circumfrence of the ring. The rings are made of alloys of steel or iron or nickle or chromium or molybendium and are designed to expand when heated at a very precise rate and amount. The ring end gap is designed to almost completely close at normal operating temperatures.

OK there is the mechanics of what your new cylinder environment is.

Here is why the many heat cold and varieing loads and rpm are necessary.

As the piston does the up and down thing, the rings are dragging along this rough surface. At the same time oil (a coolent by the way) is being sprayed and splashed on the cylinder walls below the piston. We want nice even strokes and only normal heat during this critical time to prevent GLAZING the cylinder walls and superheating the rings.

Superheating the rings destroys the temper or hardness of the ring and it looses some of it's natural outward spring tension. We also want to slowly wear down the peaks of the honing groves to maske them flat.

Now if the piston speed is too fast, the heat that destroys the rings also makes the cylinder walls super hot and instead of wearing off the top of the peak, all we do is round it over and fill in the valley (GLAZING). This makes for a very damned smooth surface but we don't want that. This is where high oil consumption usually can be traced to.

We need the rings to wear evenly around it's entire circumfrence and the cylinder to mate to each ring so that the maximum tension will be exerted against the cylinder wall but still have a honing pattern that now has flat smooth tops with many very shallow valleys for the oil to stick to. So as the piston rises the sprayed oil has a place to hold onto and for the oil to squish into as the piston comes back down and the oil controll rings scrape it back off.

A wet bore has more compression than a dry bore. The oil cools the rings, pistons, and cylinder walls and all things being equal, if the break in is done right, we won't need a rebuild for a decade or more!

A similer set of dynamics is happening with the rotating bearings of the connecting rod to crankshaft and the crank shaft bearings. But this time we are doing CRUSH clearence. Same end result, two touching surfaces that have enought clearence for oil to cool and lubricate but enough closeness that the assemblys do not bounce around, banging and crashing into each other and smashing the hell out of the soft bearing material.

These bearings are very soft compared to the VERY hard journal they are mated to. And they also expand with heat are a pre-determind rate. These are really more complicated than the rings becase not we have a lot of interaction by several masses of differnet metals that expand and contract at differnet rates.

Here are some physics questions. We have a 1 inch by 3 inch long round solid rod. We have a 1 inch inner diameter by 3 inch long hollow cylinder. And we have washer shaped piece that is 1/8 inch thick is 3 inches in outer diameter with a 2 and 3/4 inch center hole in it. If we put all three of these pieces (they are the same alloy) in an oven and heat them to 350 degrees F what changes in dimensions can we expect?

Do they all get bigger at the same ratio? Do any dimensions get smaller? What do you think happens to the outer diameter of the 1 inch rod if the 3 inch length grows longer due to the heat?

Ok, Ok I am just trying io illustrate a point. It really depends on the alloy and manufacturing method. Cast will behave differently than forged or drawn parts and there are many books on metalurgy if you are ever interested in this.

The point is we have all these shapes and add in the BOLTs all torqued together in the block (cast Iron) and they all expand and contract at differnet rates and in different dimension planes.

Some of the surfaces are hardned and most are not. Some are under torque tension and some are not. The heat cold cycles expand and contract these shapes and eventually they relax or set into a final shape.

Too cold and too hot are just as bad.

A new engine put into service in an extreem cold environment needs particular care to initial breakin.

As beefey as they look crank shafts and cam shafts have some longitudinal twist that happens. Untill they "bed in" the new bearings can be very tight and cause a lot of drag and very localized heat.

Every time the engine comes up to full opertaing temp all the hard metal parts expand or contract to their running dimensions. The softer bearing shells are forced to conform to these spaces. During cool down the harder metals change back to their cold dimensions but the softer bearing alloy stays where it was crushed too. This is deliberatly engineered in and the added clearence allows for better initial oil flow into the cold looser spaces.

As the temp comes up the metals all do their change dimension thing, the oil is warmer and flows better. Now we have extreemly thin film lube and cooling happening. Hopefully without enough clearence to cause slapping and banging.

All the while we are doing this the cast iron block and aluminum cylinder heads and PLASTIC intake manifold AND yet another alloy of cast iron exhaust manifolds and all their differnet length bolts are expanding and contracting at different rates also.

Boy now we really get an appreciation for "Quality is JOB ONE!" Don't you hope the assembler was on the ball with the torque wrench now?

If you heat it up and cool it down many, many, M A N Y times the different metals will all take their set and relax dimensions and stabilize the tight from the loose and set all the sealents and gaskets.

Once you consider all the dynamics of the new motor and the relitivley short period I am talking about I hope you can see why the first 50 miles are critical, and the first 500 should be done with some plan and deliberate method.

But like I said up top. Thousands of folks jump in a new vehicle every day and drive it normal. Others drive it like they stole it. I suspect they are the ones always complaining about a quart ever 1000-1500 miles

Me, I am ****, have rebuilt too many abused motors in my life. My method has given me dozens of motors that go well over 150,000 miles and do not use oil between changes.

 

Captain you have PM

fred

 

Fred I to am a firm believer in heat cycles, what you said makes all the sense in the world, it would have taken me two days to type that though, lol I plan on ordering my truck in the latter part of the spring and just keeping it in town for a few weeks, I really think my girlfriend (wife) would do a better job of breaking it in then me, smooth take offs, doesn't get off on WOT driving, her driving is perfect for break a truck in and she is always stopping for class and doing this and that, she would do perfect heat cycles. I would hate to get a new truck in winter, plowing is not what I call good break in, nor is idling for hours on end, really can't wait!!! Still love my '00 though...

 

You are very right -- there's got to be a slower way to get back home. It would be the first time in my life I planned on taking the slow way to get somewhere!

 

Fredvon4 -- Thanks so much for taking the time to input all that GREAT information. I took a little materials science in college so what you said makes a lot of sense.

I will try to get myself to slow down for once and perhaps take two days on this trip. I will follow your advice on any highways I get on during the first 500 miles. I have learned quite a bit, and am grateful for it. I'll look into the book recomendation as well.