Hi Spencer from UK. My 2014 plate c63amg coupe gets replaced next week by brand new model. Should I run it in or does aggressive driving in first few thousand miles actually help the engine and provide extra powe4 and noise. A friend who owns one reckons his is louder and faster as he dover it very hard in first few thousand miles of ownership. Thanks!

 

Welcome please post picture of your ride As far as breaking in a new car do which ever you want. I followed the manual but I have also driven cars hard at first. I never saw a difference

 

 

Nice looking ride

 

moved to W204 AMG forum...

 

Generally speaking, the ring-seating process happens within the first 20-30 minutes of an engine being run. I'm not sure if AMG motors are individually run-in at the factory, perhaps somebody might correct me on that. I don't think they are, due to the sheer volume of the engines that they produce.

Seating the tappets to the cam lobes (somebody correct me if I'm wrong) can be done with the engine stationary, but because it's a new bottom end too, static revving the car to mate the cam lobes to the tappets, will mean the piston rings won't seat properly.

Seating the rings requires varying loads on the engine throughout a broad rpm range. This doesn't not mean full throttle btw. Perhaps just over half throttle as a max load. Mix it up between light throttle and 60% throttle and drive it in manual, varying the rpms in different gears up to 5000rpm or so. Avoid using the last two gears as that will have a similar effect of using full throttle. You'll want to change the oil as soon as reasonably possible after this first drive. I'm not sure what oil AMG use for new engines....but you'll not want to use fully synthetic oil at this stage...the engine is still too new.

After this first drive, the lions share of the engine 'running-in' process is done. The piston rings should have nicely accustomed themselves to the cross-hatch pattern of the cylinder bores and any further seating of the rings will be by an incremental amount.


That's generally how race motors are broken in ^^^ I've done it loads of times and never had an issue with oil consumption.

That being said, if you choose to ignore all of the above, I doubt you'll have issues with the car anyway. And even then, I'm sure the engine would have been run anyway for initial testing/bleeding the cooling system by the engineers. The process I explained above is generally how you would break in a race motor. In fact...just ignore everything I said.

 

There all dyno'd before they leave either way it's already been WOT .

 

Then in that case, everything I said above is irrelevant and so is what the OP's friend thinks about running the car in hard, upon taking delivery of the car