Running in

Zathras ( snipped-for-privacy@nospamthanks.hotmail.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

At a rough guess, his job was to sweep the floors?

Since when is running-in not sporty? 'Dawdling' doesn't run an engine in. Most advice (for modern engines) recommends upto 4000rpm from day one, and increase this gradually.

Aren't engines run for hours at high load in a factory before being put in the car? Doesn't this do some of the running in?

Despite rumours, very few mass produced car engines are run at all until installed in the vehicle. Those few manufacturers that do partially run-in on the bench do load the engine quite severely but in a controlled way. These engines are mainly heavy duty diesels of greater than one litre per cylinder. Have a look here

on the 'technical' link then in the drop-down list select 'running-ina new or rebuilt engine' and click the 'view' tab.Plateaux honing of the bores and better machining of surfaces have reduced the time taken to complete the first stage in most engines these days. OTOH the increased quality and hardness of materials used in the better engines, especially petrol engines, increase the need for loads to be applied early in life or the result is high oil consumption. The only Honda engines I have ever seen to consistently use oil have been owned by dawdlers. Never seen one fail or wear out from being driven hard. Huw

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Well, I suppose someone like RR might...

Years ago I had a tour of Ford's Dagenham plant. Newly built engines, still on the conveyor system, had a pipe carrying town gas connected to the inlet manifold, and another to the exhaust. They were then fired up using an air motor on the crankshaft, revved once then stopped. That's all the running they did pre-install. I'm willing to bet that not even that is done now.

Chris

At the Basildon plant the assembly men are meant to coat the bores with oil prior to installing the pistons. When the supervisors have their backs turned it has been known in the past for the oil phase to be missed and the pistons malleted in dry. After installation the engines are then started with dry pistons and bores. Surprisingly the engines were generally good despite the shoddy assembly.

Huw

My motorway cruises are often done at max power.

So you either drive a mini 750 of 1960's vintage or constantly cruise at

120+?

Huw

How did they do that on my diesel that redlines/maxes at 4500rpm?

Maybe the funny smell in the air has confused their ability to read numbers..

That's operating redline. If you connect a different ECU, then it changes.

For example, I have a nissan micra 1l. It redlines at 6000RPM, and the ECU shuts off the fuel.

There are nutters that take the 1.3l version of this, which normally makes 74Hp or so, put a rather large turbo on it, and extract 200Hp from the same engine, at ~7500RPM.

If they do, it'll not be by burning diesel. Engines can be turned on a test bench using all sorts of methods e.g. compressed air.

The guy who told me was only referring to high performance petrol engines and didn't elaborate further on the detail. My French is dire!

There are nutters that do the above with the 1 litre version.

Paging Ed from mods..........

_probably_ not 200Hp though.

I must admit, I have occasionally looked at the flood of mini superchargers & 99 quid on ebay.

Google for his posts on mods........

I *think* he's done it properly and not cut corners......

Why not? 1000cc motorcycles make 140-150 bHp from stock, so 200 from a turbo is hardly much work...

I was meaning 200Hp on 1l, rather than 1.3.

There is nothing actually wrong with the mini supercharger - it probably wouldn't make 20PSI boost, but that's a little silly.

You'd need an intercooler, upgraded exhaust, upgraded injectors, replacement ECU, upgraded intake pipe, ...

But other than that, it's not too complex :)

Because that would mean boost somewhere in the region of 28PSI boost, on the stock engine. Make more sense to swap it for a 1.3. The stock 1.0 gearbox also would be a ridiculously weak point. The 1.3 already has problems.

I'm not saying that you can't get 200Hp out of a 1l engine. Just that it's going to be much more practical to swap (easy) the engine for a 1.3, then turbocharge that.

The CG13DE is practically the same as the CG10DE, but it's just got a longer piston throw IIRC.

So was I. Like I said, google for his posts on mods......

Probably not. There's a model of 1L Micra that's got a supercharger and turbo as standard. Ed's just built on that a little.....

Nope, just a simple case of inserting stronger, better engineered lumps and rods of metal, and bolting them in properly. Easy!