This subject has more opinions than fact. Advice on running in your engine is like being told how to clean your teeth or what food is best for you!!!! It is a personal thing.
We all ride our bikes in a different way so we load the engine and drive line differently.
I believe there is no best way to run in a new bike. However, there are important things you can do to reduce u
nnecessary wear and both are based on the oil you use and how often you change the oil. And common sense dicatates that you shouldnt thrash your bikes by red lining the RPM after 10 kilometers of riding!!!!
I have purchased many new bikes that were used solely for racing. In the days before Dynos the only way to run in the bikes was at the track. So with zero kilometers on the bike, the run in procedure was to ride the bike using about 60 percent throttle for about 25 kilometers. (about 15 minutes riding for that circuit length) Come in the pits and drop the oil and change the filter.
Go out again and lift the revs up to 80 % from red line for short bursts for another 25 kilometers then give it short busts to red line there after for about 30 minutes.
I and almost every other racer used this proceedure for many bikes and when we stripped the motors and measured the clearances there was absolutely minimul wear.
One of those bikes that was run in using that procedure was used to race a 4 hours endurance race. !!!
Most people want their road bikes to be able to do hundreds of thousands of trouble free kilometers so gentle care is taken running in the bike to hopefully create a trouble free ownership.
I think that running in your bike is your personal choice and if you do it wrong you may have short life engine and drive line. If you do it right the bike will perform as you hoped it would.
Below, I have to correct a few of the above r
ecommendations for running in your bike as i feel they are not based on facts. You need to understand how oil works and what elements are added to it, to know how each oil type wprks and for how long it works.
Always warm-up the engine completely to allow the oil to reach all the moving parts
This is a fallacy. The oil in the engine relies on the viscosity and the shearing strength of the oil to place a film of oil between two moving parts and prevent wear. Cold oil has a high viscosity reading. Hot oil has a lower viscosity reading (it gets thinner). The oil pump can move oil at room temperature so the oil begins lubricating immediately.
The hotter you engine is the hotter the oil gets and the viscosity reading becomes lower. Therefore the oil film is less dense coving the moving parts. The only possible lack of lubrication risk is the seconds in time it takes for the oil pump to circulate the oil to the furthest distance from the pump. In a hot place like thailand there would be no lubrications issues to start and ride immediately as the oil is always r
elatively warm
Always ride the motorcycle under load (no revving in neutral) as the piston rings require combustion pressure in order to fully seal to the cylinder wall.
The cylinder and piston have a maximum pressure capacity solely based on the volume of atmosphere and fuel present in the cylinder when the piston is at top dead center on the compression stroke. Regardless of if the engine is under load or rotating without load, the combustion chamber volume is constant; The combustion pressure can only vary by forced injection of atmosphere and fuel. The rings are self-sealing and are machined so that pressure from above pushes against a lip machined into the circumference of the ring and forces the ring to expand harder against the cylinder wall the more pressure is applied. However this pressure is limited to the head gaskets maximum operating pressure. It will fail if too much pressure is applied.
Avoid a busy roads, as you will need to be on and off the throttle while shifting frequently.
Varying the throttle will load all the bearings in the engine from the con rod little end bearing through the big end bearings and right through to the output shaft of the gear box. The cam drive bearings will also feel this fluctuation of load. This normal loading and unloading of the bearings should not create any unusual wear to the bearings if the oil is of the correct viscosity. Everything will be lubricated.
Avoid using synthetic oil until the motorcycle is fully broken-in. Synthetic oil can stall the break-in process as thin oil inhibits the piston rings from sealing.
The advantages of synthetic oil are due to the refinning proccess which creates an oil that can maintain the viscosity of the oil at high to extreme temperatures and the resistance to the shearing of the oil.
If the correct synthetic oil viscosity (Grade) is chosen for the anticipated ambient temperature and the type of use the engine will be subjected to, Synthetic oil is by far superior to natural crude oil in equal conditions. Synthetic oil is
not thinner than natural oils. In fact, Synthetic oils have far superior shear stability compared to conventional oils therefore Synthetic oil maintains its average viscosity compared to natural crude oil. That means a better lubricated engine and drive train.
All oils behave differently at different temperatures. As temperatures drop, the hydrocarbon molecules in mineral oils start to line up and stick together. This causes the viscosity of the oil to increase, which makes it harder for it to lubricate an engine. At high temperatures, the opposite happens and the oil's viscosity decreases, making it less effective at protecting moving parts.
Additives knows as Viscosity Improvers are added to combat this. Viscosity improvers are coiled molecules that shorten when cold, and lengthen when hot. The short, cold molecules interfere with the hydrocarbons lining themselves up, and the longer hot molecules help things stick together better at the molecular level and keep things from getting too loose.
Unfortunately, viscosity improvers break down when exposed to heat and mechanical shearing, so oils that use a lot of viscosity improvers don't last very long.
This is where synthetics have an advantage. The branched-chain structure of synthetic oils naturally resist changes in viscosity with temperature.
Fully synthetic oils often don't need any viscosity improvers at all! This is one reason synthetic oils last so much longer than non-synthetics.
Change your oil after the first 400 kilometers. The earlier you get rid of the initial engine metal shavings and debris in the oil, the less likely your engine and transmission will sustain premature wear or consume oil. "
This is sound advice but i recommend you change your oil after the first hours running regardless of riding kilometers or not. Then change again twice before 1000 kilometers. Oil is very cheap insurance to maintain a good engine
" The best way to break in a motorcycle, this controversial topic has plagues motorcycle forums since the beginning of the Internet. Motorcycle Thailand did some research, called qualified sources and uncovered how you can get the most of of your new motorcycle's engine.
