new truck....what is the break in time ( mileage wise )

before you can kinda get on it ?

I have heard that with brand new vehicles, its best to wait till the motor has 500 miles on it before any hard driving is done ? Truck has 324 right now ( new tundra 4 x 4 ).

 

It's a Tundra...put it in beast mode and drive it like you stole it!

 

Yeah, I was off the lot for 5 mins and punched it right up to 95mph on a nice toll road straight away!

I drive very aggressively, 80 all the time on freeways, no issues. This truck has been amazing. If I see a hole, I can get in the hole. Don't have to wait for the damn vehicle to catch up.

 

I believe the manual talks about breaking in period. No hard starts/stops for X number of miles; sorry I don't remember.

 

Didn’t you get a manual with your new truck?

It was excruciatingly hard to drive this slow!

 

I guess I am one of the few who believes in a break in period. I pretty much followed the owner's manual.

 

As did I, it was just hard to wait 1000m to punch it.

 

I observed the break-in period. But I cheated a little every now-and-then.

 

RTFM! Welcome from CO!

 

Vary speed and RPM as much as possible for the first 250 miles, don't tow until 500 miles (rear diff break in), and don't floor it until 1,000 miles.

 

I follow manual. Vary speed and load. First 500. And another 500. Then have oil changed. Then I get on it a little more here and there. And drive as normal to 3k. Dump oil and filter. Then continue normal and here and there romps. Have 5k service at dealership. Then sing worry about it. This is my 3rd tundra. After the 2 year service expires I go signature grade amsoil and filter from that point forward every 7500.

 

150 miles new I was over 100mph and around 300 miles I was down shifting at high speeds and up shifting at the rev limiter. Haven't had any drivetrain problems at 47k. The break on another engine on a fresh rebuild, I'd commute around the same speed and the car acted different at those RPM's.

 

hmm.. so how the hell do you test drive and test out the v8 engine if you can't floor it? LOL..

 

When you rear end someone blame Toyota. Tell the police you weren’t allowed to brake suddenly for a couple hundred miles.

 

I own a diesel repair shop. We repair and rebuild up to 2000 HP engines for the Marine & mining industry. We build em and put to work. When you build an engine for a 100 ton haul truck they go to the pit and put on all they can and come out smoking hot. I can't imagine telling a barge service to lightly load their barges and vary the rpm till the engine I just rebuilt gets broke in.

 

Just run it.Never had any problems

 

Drive it like you stole it. I never worried about that kind of stuff and never had any issues related to "not breaking in a vehicle". To each their own of course. If it makes you feel better to baby it for 500 miles go for it. On the tacoma the manual I think recommended not towing for the first 500 miles to allow the rear differential gearing to break in. Not a big deal really. How often do you hear of somebody blowing up their motor or rear end because they ran it too hard in the first 500, 1500 or 10000 miles? I never have. If it has happened its likely extremely rare.

 

Left the dealership on the test drive with my foot buried. Had 6 miles on it. At 8,000 now and don't anticipate any problems. Growing up next door to an engine shop I learned to "break in" a fresh rebuild just the opposite of what the manual says. Always have drove them over aggressively for the first 1,000 miles or so and never had a problem during my ownership related to it.

 

The first thing I did when I pulled out of the dealership was smoke the tires. I towed the next day and hauled 1k pounds in the bed the following. Then offroading in 1st and 2nd gear for 12 hours one day and 10 the next. I've got about 2500 miles on it now.

 

I lead footed on the test drive.. gotta know what you're buying! lol. But now I'm easy on it, almost 1000 miles and less than 1 month in.

 

9 days off the lot and a tad over 200 miles on the clock, but I needed to grab a pallet of 50 bags of 50 lb salt.

 

That'll put you on the ol bump stops!!! LOL

 

The mudflaps scraped the parking stop.

Good thing was I didn’t have to drive too far.

 

A lot of products (not all ofcourse) that require a break in period are for encouraging the customer to give it time if it isnt performing/sounding/comfortable ect... As they were expecting.

People really do adapt to things and either forget about what may have been annoying or lacking of, or now become accustomed to the difference they initially noticed compared to whatever they replaced or upgraded from.

Basic home book shelf speakers are a decent example. Speakers sound different. A set you're used to listening to is what you will precieve to sound correct, for the most part. Replacing them with a sonically superior set doesnt mean they will sound superior to what you're accustomed to. It can take a week or two before it becomes the new accustomed to thing.

Manufactures in many different industries do account for this and come up with creative ways to convince a customer to "let it grow on them".

Ill concede that a vehical is a complex smorgasbord of friction producing thingamajiggers but seems like once the fluids are up to temp and circulating it is good to go.

Then again, you do hear nascar teams talk about breaking in new/rebuilt engines, i think...

 

There has to be a reason for Toyota to want new owners to follow a procedure to break in their vehicles ? The only reason I can come up with is to make the vehicle trouble free as possible during ownership. No ?

 

Just because a lot of people have ignored the recommendations from Toyota regarding engine break in without any apparent problem does not mean that damage was not done.
It may mean that the engine will only last for 250,000 miles and not 750,000.
For people who will trade their vehicles in for new within 3 to 5 years, they may never experience the failure caused by the treatment inflicted on their vehicles.
This is another reason why I like to buy new stuff and not used. It applies to everything from trucks to chainsaws.

 

I do hard break ins on my new cars. Even if Toyota and others knew that it's best to break the engines in hard, they simply couldn't put that wording in the manual for legal reasons. As soon as the first person crashed doing a red line run it would be all over...

 

Good point. I went easy on my new Tundra on the 600 mile drive back home from the dealership, and didn't do any serious off roading until 2200 miles. I've certainly had to floor it to pass cars from time to time.

I would think if the break-in period were absolutely critical to the success of the engine and its various systems, there would be failsafe mechanisms in place to enforce this -- a beep here, a chime there, a flashing indicator telling you to knock it the hell off.

To me, more important than not flooring it in the first 500 miles, is to do an oil change at 1000 miles to make sure any microscopic shavings from all those new parts hammering around are out of the picture.

And as much as I really wanted to read the manual for my new truck, when I saw that it was instead a monolithic tome broken into countless sub-books spread across two separate binders, I just kind of shrugged and tossed it, along with my unused floor mats and the front wheel mud flaps, into the "useless truck crap" box that will forever live in my storage locker.

 

peel out in the dealership parking lot. Helps break in a lot faster. Also do a bunch of 60-0 runs. Gotta get the brakes set right.

 

Follow the manual recommendations. If you bought this type of truck to be doing burnouts and flooring it constantly maybe you own the wrong vehicle.