Safe Speed Forums

Thanks all.
I'll go for the 'treat it nicely' option I think.

Treat it like a new GF ( or baby) --be nice - cars are female ( ouch ) ----they like to be treated as such - ( other similarity is that they cost a heck of a lot at times to keep them looking nice--more ouch - wife has just read that)

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Have just dug out the manual from my C4 it's a 2.0HDi (138bhp) but the 1.6HDi (110bhp) is shared with the Berlingo and the Partner:



My dealer did also add that for the 2.0HDi engine give it a good hard drive/rev once every 1,000 miles after 5,000 up to 10,000 miles to blow any crap out and it would be about the 10,000 to 15,000 for max fuel economy, which is what I'm finding.

Not sure about the Peugeot warranty requirements though.

Hope that helps...

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

Traced the previous (and first) owner of my car on the relevant forum. He said he hadn't run it in, and he'd taken it fairly young round the Nurburgring

Oh well....

We do a great deal of work with Peugeot - including the Partner. You don't need to do anything special as far as running-in goes. Years ago, when engines were assembled by hand and the sizes (and shapes!) of mating parts varied considerably more than they do now, it was important to let everything rub its sharp corners off and wear to the shape of its mating bit. These days, that isn't really an issue. As Smeggy said, piston rings and bores are probably the only important bit nowadays and to be honest, they benefit from having a decent amount of pressure on top of the piston every now and then in the early miles.

Obviously, I wouldn't exactly fire it up from cold, bounce the engine off it's speed governor and smoke the tyres straight out of the showroom, but as for being especially gentle, I wouldn't bother. Each time I get a new 807 (2.0 HDI) it gets 150 miles on the way home straight down the M74. The only special thing I do is check the oil frequently (every day) for the 1st week and then every week up to 6000 miles. The 6000 mile service is only an oil level check and top-up because they often use a little bit until the piston rings have been pushed out hard against the bores. The first oil and filter change is at 12,000 (synthetic oil is wonderful stuff!)

I'm not sure it's strictly true to say the manufacturer has no interest in the car once it goes out of warranty either. They need to keep residual values high so that buying a new one frequently is an attractive financial proposition.

If it helps, allay any reservations, a lot of the vehicles we sell are used as taxis and there are plenty of them (2.0 HDIs again) with well over a quarter of a million miles on the original engine with no problems. They seem to do about 50,000 miles a year on average.

Chill out and enjoy! I think you've bought one of the best small diesel engines currently available!

Finally, I wouldn't labour it at low revs - but I wouldn't do that to an engine with 200,000 miles on either!

Someone suggested I put some 'Slick 50' into the oil but I have no idea.

Snake oil I reckon. If it was really good, why isn't every oil manufacturer and every vehicle manufacturer using it, including it or recommending it?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Yep, we tried it in our karts.
Result = The square-root of effall.

Noooooooooo!

Absolutely not! under no circumstances, ever...

You might well void your warranty and it is very unlikely to do any good. Do an internet search on it (and all the other various magic potions you can put in your engine) and you'll find all sorts of stories for and against...

...but the "against" ones usually have some scientific basis and the "for" ones are usually anecdotal.

Honestly, properly serviced, engines last a very long time. The body usually rusts away on most cars before the engine dies (assuming no inherent design faults and proper servicing). My own car is 16 years old and has over 220,000 miles on it. The engine is fine (burns a bit of oil now but not enough to visibly smoke or fail its MOT). The body, however, is not long for this world!

From memory, some manufacturers wouldn't honour the warranty on engines treated with teflon-based additives because the teflon particles would clog the oil filter and this, in turn, would then open its internal pressure relief valve and effectively take itself out of the circuit. I'd much rathre have the benefit of a decent oil filter than a bottle of magic gloop any day!

Going back to Paul's watch analogy on the Safespeed home page, you can imagine that Peugeot have probably spent a bit more developing the engine than Rolex might spend developing a watch. You wouldn't dream of buying a new Rolex, prising the back off and giving the cogs a squirt of WD40 just to try and improve things by reducing friction would you?

Ha Ha Ha!

Enough said. I had to ask though.

Just thought I'd throw this in. I've just had the bike engine completely rebuilt from the ground up, and a little...improvement... done. The bloke who did the work recons that the run-in procedure is basically as follows:

Bench-run until hot. Shut down and allow to cool for about 6 hours before retensioning head bolts (obviously to allow the head gasket to seat)

Go for a short ride to check for oil leaks and if there are none ride until properly hot. Repeat as above.

Go for a longer ride and give it some WOT time to bed the rings in.

Run-in complete.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

Got the car and am enjoying it but would like to know any opinions on starting.
A mechanic suggested driving off as soon as the engine has started so as to warm it up ASAP as this will reduce the condensation in the exhaust therefore reducing the corrosion and also the most damage occours in a cold engine so it's best to get it warm quickly.
I would have thought 10-20 seconds at idle would be best for lubricating the engine.
Also when coming to switch off should the vehicle idle for a few seconds or should you just switch off?
Apologies for being so anal but it's my new toy and I would like to look after it properly.

Harking back to my Citroen Manual it suggests driving off straight away and warns against let it idle to 'warm up'.

Likewise stopping just turn it off.

Hope that helps.

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Gordon Brown saying I got the country into it's current economic mess so I'll get us out of it is the same as Bomber Harris nipping over to Dresden and offering to repair a few windows.

Chaos, panic and disorder - my work here is done.

http://www.wildcrafts.co.uk

Slik 50 can prevent an engine from running in properly. Under no circumstances use it in a new engine.

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Speed camera policy Kills

If you have just given it a thrash then let it idle for a bit to cool the turbo. But for most people driving from the end of the street to the drive/house is enough.

I've done the next best thing. I do about 30K miles per year so I don't have to wait long to see the changes. My last car was a Xsara with the 90BHP HDI and my current car is a C5 with the 110BHP HDI engine. Both of them showed a significant increase in mpg over the first 10,000 miles. The Xsara started at 47mpg and finished at 55mpg and the C5 started at 43mpg and now does 48mpg (currently at 60K miles).

I have been told by two people who worked for Citroen and Peugeot garages that if you are too gentle with the HDI engines when they are new it ruins them. They said that it glazes the bores and then they don't want to rev and start to smoke. My Xsara had done 90K miles when I changed it and didn't use enough oil to need topping up between services and neither does the C5 (both have 12,500 mile service intervals - Peugeot only have 12,000 for the same engines ).

The best running in advice seems to be drive normally and don't thrash it for a couple of thousand miles.

Starting off immediately or letting it idle for 30 seconds or so won't make a "tinker's cuss" of difference to anything! Conventional wisdom at present is to move off as soon as the engine is running because this makes it work harder and gets it up to working temperature quicker thereby reducing fuel consumption. Condensation isn't really an issue unless your journey is so short that the exhaust can't warm up to a high enough temperature to evaporate it. All cars will have condensation in the exhaust until it gets up to working temperature but after that, it will evaporate off again.

There is, in my view, some sense in letting the engine idle for a bit before shut-down to let the turbo slow down and cool a bit but (no offence mate! ) this isn't exactly a full-race spec engine we're talking about here!

I agree that not allowing the engine to develop what's called "maximum brake mean effective pressure" in the cylinders during run-in will, at best, not help the bedding-in of the rings. Don't hit the rev-limiter whe nthe engine is cold (or ever, ideally) and don't labour it at low revs in a high gear. Everything else is fair game!

I'm currently on my fourth company 807 with the 2.0 HDI (110) engine in. I zero the trip computer when I get the car and again at the 6000 mile service. All of them have shown (on average) a 0.5 - 0.7MPG improvement over their second 6000 miles. That said, this is the whole car we're talking about - not just the engine. There will be a tiny bot of tightness ("newness") in every wheel bearing, gearbox bearing, driveshaft CV joint.... and so on. All these will loosen up a bit and help to give better economy after a while.