New bike breakin - a curiousity | GTAMotorcycle.com

New bike breakin - a curiousity

Skyway6

Well-known member
Not meaning to start a whole break in war, may be inevitable but..

Just something i wonder about. Most know the several ways people say to break in a bike.
Some baby it. keep in below 5k for the first 1000km. drive it like you stole it etc
Even some manuals offer vague ways to break in.

but after watching the docu-series "Full Throttle" about all the steps on how the major players build the bikes we love.

The one theme across all of them is they take every bike off the end of the assembly line. fill with fluids and into a booth.
They then reef it thru all the gears and the fulll rev range right up to redline. Not even letting the bike warm up. The bikes are run HARD. Doing everything we are told not to or we will destroy our bike. So does every bike built come ready with a pre-destroyed motor? or is motor already broken in at the factory?

if i recall correctly, Even MV Augusta - takes a freshly built motor meant for a 100k euro bike - runs it HARD for one hour
and only after it passes this test is it deemed worthy to be installed in a bike.

i am thinking motors are already broken in at the factory. it is the other bits of the bike that need a bit of time. Brakes - rotors/pads etc etc.
 
Ride it hard the firdt 3-4 hrs and youre break inis done. Just change oil at 100/500/1000 MILES. Ive rebuilt engines. Rings seems to sit better.
 
I always laugh at people who worry about revying their bikes (or cars) past some certain magical number. News to you - it's already been done! Both at the factory and by the dealership.

I'd worry more about cold starts and riding right away before oil has a chance to distribute. That's where most wear occurs.

I don't know about changing oil 3 times within 1,000 miles. Seems a bit excessive (not crazy) but yes - at least one early oil change is recommended by almost any expert (not your local backdoor mechanic, those guys still think that the "max cold pressure" on the sidewall of your tire is what you inflate it to).
 
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I never sat at the same revs for a long time,up and down never holding the same,for at least 100k.
 
funny you mention "max cold pressure"
i questioned a couple of Honda dealers about the NC when i first got it. The Honda recommended pressure (both in manual and on swingarm)
is the max cold pressure of the tires (42 rear / 36 front) - Metzeler Z8 rear max is 42. I brought up the fact that the Ninja 650 i had. Similar in size and weight it is 36/32 (rear/front) Thought it had to be a mistake. So i set it to 39r/33f and even that seems high.
 
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I guess you can skip the 100 mile. But its something id recommend for a rebuild /fresh engine.

Everyone has their own way i guess.
 
Ride it like your normally would. Personally I beat the piss out of the brand new bikes and cars/trucks I've had... They all ran great!
 
I followed my owners manual. I was confused like you OP, as I found something to contradict everything. When it came down to it, Kawi built my bike, and they gave me instructions in the manual for exactly this. I did what my manufacturer recommended.

I got the bike in the spring, did the engine break-in, and it has 7500km on it now. No engine issues at all.
 
Ride it like you're making payments on it?
 
Ride it like your normally would. Personally I beat the piss out of the brand new bikes and cars/trucks I've had... They all ran great!

+1, Break in regimen is an outdated idea. New engines are built to such precise tolerances and with new oils and alloys, it's just not important, which is why the manuals don't really care how you ride the bike when new.

Same reason why high mileage is now 2 - 3x a bigger number than before.
 
I know for sure that Aprilia and MV will run/test the engine before it reach customers. If I'm not mistaken Aprilia does it twice, first is done with the engine alone and another one at the final stage after they put together the bike. Italian manufacturers don't produce as many bike as the Japanese's do and also the Italian's still use a lot of human touch in their production process so I'm guessing Japanese's might have a different method to keep the process more time efficient.

I used the first 1000 km to familiarize myself with the bike, tires and brakes. Tend to short shift, didn't really want to abuse it since the oil that normally comes from the dealer is most likely not a full synthetic one.
 
A few years back there was that story about the guy who rode from Key West to Alaska and back on a brand new CBR 125. Red lined most of the way with no issues whatsoever.
 
like that makes ANY difference.

Yes it does since I paid for the bike, if you paid for it then I will skip the whole risk management idea :D
Besides my bike never let me down even if I keep it below 8000 rpm, it's a sweet V4 engine my friend ;)
 
The proper 2 stroke break in procedure is to warm the bike to the point you can feel heat through the head, take it out and run it to the redline in all gears then put it away until completely cool, re torque heads then ride it like you stole it.
The idea is to break in the rings as quickly as possible with the maximum pressure, if you baby it like most people do, the cylinders glaze, the rings don't seat and you get plenty of blowby in comparison... I really don't think it's any different with a diesel.

Some guys will add a few heat cycles before seating the rings , then tear down the top end and sand the shinny "high" spots on the pistons, then seat the rings but I'm too lazy to bother with that.
 
Yes it does since I paid for the bike, if you paid for it then I will skip the whole risk management idea :D
Besides my bike never let me down even if I keep it below 8000 rpm, it's a sweet V4 engine my friend ;)

The reason why the service manuals rarely specify oil as synthetic or not, is because it really does not matter. Oil-related failures on modern bikes is a unicorn. Maybe on 60-70s era air-cooled engines.
CDN Tire makes a lot of money on various magic juices in colorful cans that promise to address a problem that doesn't exist in the first place. No one's engine asploded, ever, because a dealer put in cheap oil.
 
The proper 2 stroke break in procedure is to warm the bike to the point you can feel heat through the head, take it out and run it to the redline in all gears then put it away until completely cool, re torque heads then ride it like you stole it.

This is 2014 right? I never did all that nonsense on my RD350LC when it was new.
 
Yup, it's 2014 bud and the factory did it because they knew you didn't have the stones! Haha
 
Yup, it's 2014 bud and the factory did it because they knew you didn't have the stones! Haha

Love these threads..."do this because my buddy's cousin knows a guy in Kenora who read a book and he said to do that."
 
This is the only reason I chimed in on this... I did a rebuild 7 years ago on my triple and I baby'd it by not reving too much for the first 1000k, I striped it down at the end of that first season and was shocked with the amount of blowby... That's when I did my research and found that the method I mentioned was the way the race teams did it.
I followed the procedure and haven't had issues since.
 

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