Best method for breaking-in new cylinders

[mike_elliott]

These darn airplane engines, I've come to the realization that some times things don't go as planned and they burn more oil (even newer engines) than they should and at some point you have to decide just to dump oil in and go have fun.

air cooled internal combustion engines are the work of the devil. 

[PTK]

In one of his webinars Mike Busch says run it hard and rich and try to keep it cool. Shallow climbs, open cowl flaps and low altitude.

This he says will complete ~90% of break in in about an hour! Someone said it took 100 hours!

He also feels mineral oil is not necessary.

Is there really this much variation? This is not an exact science I understand but this much? Is it chrome vs steel cylinders?

[jetdriven]

my steel cylinders took 90kr to display regular CHT

[aaronk25]

That's interesting? We have ... maybe thirty hours on our new steel cylinders? The CHTs are still high in the climbs, even after I accelerate to 120mph+ ...

Perhaps I'll have to run mine at higher power settings going to the Bahamas this Saturday ... just in case those steel cylinders are not completely broken-in?

:-)

You brave......open water and new cylinders! Nice there though maybe that offsets the concern.....I could be talked into it.....

[M20Kid]

Since I started this thread way back when, I thought I would tell what I did and share the results.

 

As another poster stated, I didn't know if the GAMI spread was still correct and I chose to operate at 40" MAP, 2500 RPM and all the gas I could put through it ( about 24 GPH) to make sure the CHTs were as low as possible.  I did a two blocks about 90 minutes each and it seems to have worked great!  I've put about 300 hours on the cylinders now and I add about 1 qt of oil every 25 hours and retains some amber color the day it is drained for an oil change.

 

In my humble opinion, the risk of running high power settings lean of peak without doing a GAMI check first is not worth the price of some Avgas.  The extra gas cannot hurt the engine but LOP with an unbalanced fuel condition certainly can.  In the end, we all need to do what things the way we are comfortable and this particular method kept my pucker factor at a minimum.