Quote:
Originally Posted by WarmAndSCSI
So much misinformation in this thread. No piston rings take THOUSANDS of miles to break in, at least that should never be the case. With an OEM engine that has plateau-honed cylinder walls and pre-lapped piston rings, your rings and cylinder walls will break in within a matter of seconds. Really all you're doing in the first couple hundred miles is ensuring the peaks of the oiling cross hatch are flattened all the way (the plateau honing process gets most of this done) and that all of the valleys are cleaned out.
If you're having oil consumption past 1000 miles or so, there is likely something wrong that will rear its ugly head later. An engine has only so much "time" for a proper break-in to occur - after that window, your cylinder walls will likely be permanently glazed to some extent.
OEM-recommended break-in procedure is just CYA on their part.
That said, who knows where the root cause of the oil consumption problem on the VHR lies... Nissan will likely never admit to their fault. But I don't understand the point of a bunch of people who have probably never even touched the inside of an engine throwing around a bunch of conjecture. I'm fine if a bunch of experienced engine builders and tuners like myself want to have an intelligent, experience-based discussion proposing what the root cause might be, but what's going on in all of these oil recommendation and oil consumption threads is just asinine.
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..and saying that your rings are seated within a few seconds is just as much misinformation. Sure if you are cutting limbs off a tree with a chainsaw you can go through them in a few seconds but when you are wearing in rings which are very hard against your cylinder wall that are suppose to be resistant to wear you are going to "seat" in somewhat but definately not fully. You are basically machining materials which are resistant to wear and it doesn't take seconds. Show me ONE profesional racing team that races a car after a few seconds of break in.... not qualifying but a full race.
I agree with you that there is a lot of misinformation in this thread but going to the other extreme doesn't help.... there is enough exageration going on here. There are a hand full of motors that do suffer from oil consumption - just like any other manufacture.
For the record my oil consumption has significantly reduced in 15,000Km...