Finally got delivery on a new P400 and love the drive. a friend asked me if I were keeping it local (no highways) until the engine had some milage on it, maybe a few hundred on the odometer. That type of advice - to me - seemed really odd and maybe was what folks did in the 1970s?! Their advice boiled down to not taking a new car (engine) on the highway (going 70 mph+) for hours was not a good thing for the long term health of the engine. What says folks that know this stuff? Bad advice? thanks.

 

Modern engines don't need to be broken-in. Engine construction, piston ring technology and cylinder liner technology has improved so much in the past 10-20 years. It wouldn't hurt to take it easy the first thousand miles or so, but it isn't necessary by any means. I didn't drive the crap out of my car right when I bought it, but I didn't baby it by any means.

JLR recommends to take it easy the first 2000 miles, but like I said, it isn't necessary. Look at all the press cars that get delivered and have the **** beaten out of them right off the bat, and they don't have any long-term issues.

 

They might be okay now, but 40-50,000 miles down the line the third owner will pick up the tab for the abuse.

Drive it normally for the first few months, don't thrash it or drive unduly carefully. Just use it.

 

Who buys a car thinking about the second or third owner?

Like I said, It doesn't hurt the car to take it easy, but you won't do any long-term damage if you thrash it. Most automakers don't even have break-in periods anymore.

 

Then go ahead and beat on it from day one. Redline it from every stoplight. Change the oil every 21,000 miles. Live life to the fullest. And then get back to us in a few years and let us know how it’s going.

 

Let's go through the posting history and correlate the "I just picked up new Defender and drove it 1500 miles home at 80+mph" or "Took my brand new Defender to Moab this week and did all the gnarly trails" with the postings 18 months later saying "Defender is the biggest POS ever, keeps having drivetrain issues".

 

Back in the day, there were definitely reasons why you wanted to break in a new car harshly. I put a brand new P400 in my H1 back in 2022, and because its an IDI diesel whose design dates back to the 70's with some of the worst manufacturing tolerances in the automotive industry - for the first 500 miles I drove my tank like I stole it, just to seat the piston rings. I tried not to sit at a constant RPM for more than 5 seconds at a time.

However, like others have said, these days - that type of treatment isn't necessary.

"Mechanical Sympathy" is the name of the game.

 

yea, I'm asking the Q so I DON'T end up like one of those idiots. My other LR has been with me since the beginning and now over 100k in mileage, and still going well (engine wise). I have a new Defender I paid alot for, I want longevity from it, just like the older LR. But let's face it, given modern driving it's hard to NOT drive on a highway at 65 mph. Or to brake hard because the lug-nut ahead of you was not paying attention to the road and then needed to stop suddenly. When you have to merge on a highway, you can't always do that gently. It's going to be a heavy push to the pedal to get to speed quickly enough. Thus, do I keep the Defender around town and not on highways? For how long? To be honest, I'm not sure I did any of this with my prior LR, and it's been just fine. I didn't often floor it. Any time I have, it's because I'm merging on a busy street and there's an A-hole behind that decided not to slow down sufficiently - just to be a jerk - so I have to compensate and get room by flooring it. Other than that, I'm an easy going driver. I will say, the new Defender drives like a dream - absolutely love it. And all the tech is great too.

 

Porsche has a whole fleet of cars they use for their experience centers. They get flogged hard from the first mile then they are sold as CPO with an extra couple years added on top of the factory warranty.

They also are religiously warmed up fully before flogging and allowed to cool down before being shutdown. They get careful oil top offs and changes.

 

That kind of advice and thinking is the same as changing oil every 5k miles. Living in the past.