Australasia Delivery Shakedown Drive - Any Restrictions or Recommendations?

I was on duty yesterday, and the radio was quiet, so we (inevitably) began discussing the impending delivery of my Gren. I've been torn this past week over whether to just drive back home the easiest way, or do a bit of a detour.

As I'm taking delivery of the vehicle from SLRV/Expedition HQ, I've a few options. First option is to just drive straight home down the freeway some 800km back to Sydney from the Gold Coast. I was initially going to take delivery and drive straight back to the hotel, and drive home the next day. The trip down the freeway is long and boring, and sitting on 110kph the entire way (just about). I've done this trip many many times.

One of my colleagues suggested I split it into two days - after delivery, drive to some place intermediate, and then the next day drive the rest of the way home. We came up with a route that I've not done before, which would allow me to really test the Gren out fairly safely, and get used to the vehicle characteristics. That is, drive west from the Gold Coast to Beaudesert, Woodenbong, Legume, then down to Tenterfield and Glen Innes. This part of the trip sees me drive down country and dirt roads, through some spectacular scenery, twisty windy bits, hilly bits, and maybe get into Glenn Innes after dark (testing out my new driving lights).

The next day, I drive south from Glen Innes to Armidale, Walcha, Wauchope, onto the M1 freeway, and home. It's all cruisy road, but the trip from Walcha to Wauchope is very twisty windy stuff. I think I'll be glad to complete the twisty windy when I get onto the freeway!

Here's the question though. Are there any initial restrictions on speed or RPM or not going offroad, so the engine can bed in/wear in etc? Would it be the same if I just pointed it to the freeway and cruised home - it would be long hours or a set speed and RPM, whereas driving home the long way would be a myriad of speeds and RPM ranges.

I would spend some time on the road getting use to the car, steering and its basic controls. An hour or two should be enough, then spice it up.

You could from the Gold Coast to Warwick, then head south, when you get to Inverell*, head to Grafton** and the M1. The Gwyder Highway is a great drive. Glen Innes is historic, but a dying town. Inverell is very dynamic in comparison, with a young population.

* You would need to go Warwick, Stanthorpe, Texas, Warialda, Inverell then Glenn Innes. A really fun way is to go Warialda then Bingara (great place to stay over night), then through the Copeton Dam across to Inverell>Glenn Innes>Grafton>M1. A great drive.

** To make it more interesting take the Orara Highway from Grafton down to Coffs Harbour. Scenic road with lots of bends, not much traffic.

In years past, engines were built with with tight tolerances on piston/ring fit in the bores. The builder selected the piston/ring combination that felt a really tight fit in each bore.

Nowadays the build process deliberately has wide clearances in the bores to reduce friction, at the expense of oil loss of course.

So engines don't require running in at all

Snipewench said:

I was on duty yesterday, and the radio was quiet, so we (inevitably) began discussing the impending delivery of my Gren. I've been torn this past week over whether to just drive back home the easiest way, or do a bit of a detour.

As I'm taking delivery of the vehicle from SLRV/Expedition HQ, I've a few options. First option is to just drive straight home down the freeway some 800km back to Sydney from the Gold Coast. I was initially going to take delivery and drive straight back to the hotel, and drive home the next day. The trip down the freeway is long and boring, and sitting on 110kph the entire way (just about). I've done this trip many many times.

One of my colleagues suggested I split it into two days - after delivery, drive to some place intermediate, and then the next day drive the rest of the way home. We came up with a route that I've not done before, which would allow me to really test the Gren out fairly safely, and get used to the vehicle characteristics. That is, drive west from the Gold Coast to Beaudesert, Woodenbong, Legume, then down to Tenterfield and Glen Innes. This part of the trip sees me drive down country and dirt roads, through some spectacular scenery, twisty windy bits, hilly bits, and maybe get into Glenn Innes after dark (testing out my new driving lights).

The next day, I drive south from Glen Innes to Armidale, Walcha, Wauchope, onto the M1 freeway, and home. It's all cruisy road, but the trip from Walcha to Wauchope is very twisty windy stuff. I think I'll be glad to complete the twisty windy when I get onto the freeway!

Here's the question though. Are there any initial restrictions on speed or RPM or not going offroad, so the engine can bed in/wear in etc? Would it be the same if I just pointed it to the freeway and cruised home - it would be long hours or a set speed and RPM, whereas driving home the long way would be a myriad of speeds and RPM ranges.

Click to expand...

I would drive around locally for a day so if anything needs to be sorted you can take it straight back.

A good long distance drive with no special run in or driving procedure on the high way and back roads for a brand new driveline is good for getting every component to operating temperature and maintaining that temperature allowing all components to stabilise dimensionally for several hours. This is one of the best procedures to reduce oil consumption as the sealing surfaces and coatings between dissimilar materials will have reduced movement which can reduce oil leaks and consumption later down the track. It also allows higher pressure gasses to get behind the piston rings for a longer duration producing better sealing surfaces. Piston ring technology has changed and modern engines have less ring tension, tighter piston to bore and moving part tolerances for the lighter new synthetic oils and more complex surface coatings all to reduce energy losses.
Engines still need some sort of hot run in as most car engine factories cold run most engines with an electric motor to check for correct assembly. Only a few engines are taken off the line for a full short hot run mainly for quality assurance.
A good long run straight of the dealer lot also is good for the gears in the diffs and transmissions to start wearing in and develop good surface qualities while the driveline temperatures have equalised and are settled.

landmannnn said:

In years past, engines were built with with tight tolerances on piston/ring fit in the bores. The builder selected the piston/ring combination that felt a really tight fit in each bore.

Nowadays the build process deliberately has wide clearances in the bores to reduce friction, at the expense of oil loss of course.

So engines don't require running in at all

Click to expand...

I do agree that manufactures have changed engine design and construction, but that doesn't change the break-in cautions for BMW engines...

Looking at the drive mentioned by @TheDocAUS, I just finished mapping it. It’s about 850km from SLRV to Grafton via Texas and Bingara, Copeton Dam, and Glen Innes. That’s still about 4+ hours to home.

Hmmm…

(I’ve forgotten how much fun it was to spend time in a mapping app and plotting routes)

It is a two day drive. Too much for one day if you want to enjoy the drive.

I have stayed at Bingara overnight and want to go back to the area. Binagara to Inverell is a great drive through Copeton Dam. You drive across the dam wall. Inverell, Glenn Innes to Grafton on the Gwyder Highway is really nice as well - once you get past the ugly windmills.

We also picked ours up from SLRV and did the drive from Gold Coast to Brisbane, via Beaudesert, Stanthorpe & Warwick (about 500k by the time we got home).

It was a great drive with loads of variety to get know the car, including the steering on the windy backroads,

I also agree with keeping the engine at operating temperature and giving the components a good run-in, you don't have to push it, just enjoy the drive.

Be careful driving out of SLRV though, go slow until you get used to having to pull the steering back (I almost speared off the road).

I am 800 miles into my break-in and all is good! Really good mix of highway and city plus today I started climbs at high altitude.. (10,000 ft)

Took delivery of my Gren today. Was painless (except on the bank balance), but wasn’t without issues. As Ric was on leave until today, my vehicle didn’t get the latest software update, until I discovered that Carplay froze once I was out onto the main road. A quick call to Ric, and it was a 5min drive back to them for the update. I also have an issue with the TPMS, as they changed the rims from steelies to alloys, and now can’t get the TPMS sensors recognised by the car. It’s all a bit silly, but we have a way forward, which will just take time.

All of which meant I was late out of SLRV, and decided anyway to continue the drive out through Beaudesert and down the Mount Lyndsay Highway/Road, through all the twisty windey road, past amazing scenery, into the night on back country roads down to Tenterfield, and onto the highway down to Glen Innes. I need to adjust the lightbar up a few degrees, but the visibility it provides is addictive! I’ve not ever had a vehicle with such configuration before.

The steering is as predicted and documented elsewhere on this forum. I realised very early on today that one has to actually drive this vehicle, and that’s fine by me. Although return to centre is not there, I have to say it’s darn close, and I’m not really bothered by it so far. Like I said, one has to actually drive this thing, not put brain in neutral and point it roughly in a direction.

The RHS left foot bump I had no issue with. I managed to get my seat into a position where I feel like I’m sitting down at a table, and not lying down on my back having to stretch my legs out in front of me. I’m much more upright, and the Recaro seat is fantastic in supporting such a position.

Around all those tight turns, I felt no body roll. It was very stiff, very commanding, very planted, some road noise from the K02’s, but contrasted by good music, and Apple Carplay that works

I love it!

Arrived home safely, and without incident, after yet another long drive across twisty windey roads.

Today’s trip had me leave Glen Innes, and travel south down the new England Highway to Uralla, then south to Walcha for something to eat at one of the Cafe’s, and then headed east across the mountains to Wauchope. This part of the journey is very twisty and windey, and generally drops over about 50km from 1200m down to near sea-level. The scenery was fantastic, the road was generally quite good (though with rain events in the past causing land-slips, there’s a number of road works.

I took it easy today, as there was no time constraint (apart from dinner waiting for me at home). Took my time crossing the mountains, stopping for rests and some photos, I hit the freeway at Port Macquarie, and pointed the Gren south towards home, down to Sydney.

The Gren performed magnificently. I sat on 100kph on the freeway on cruise control, and the Gren lapped it up. No issues at all with the steering. I did start having pain in my left knee, and attributed this to just pushing on too far. I filled up with fuel at Glen Innes in 4 degree temp, and again at Taree Service Centre, but from Taree south, I didn’t stop (about 2 or so hours home).

Regarding the Infotainment screen, I had one event where a phone call muted the music audio after the call ended (the music is muted during calls, but then should fade back in afterwards). I also had to check and change the timezone, so the inbuilt time matched the phone’s time.

The UHF radio that I had installed by Expedition hQ worked flawlessly. A wide load about 5km ahead of me at one point heard my transmissions loud and clear. _SO_ much better than the little hand-held I used in my old car.

I thoroughly enjoyed this two days of driving. A combination of day time and night time driving, very twisty windey roads requiring concentration and precise turning, general day and night country road driving, and freeway driving. My odometer is now about 1100kms

Any reason you bought from the GC rather than Syd? Mine's arriving shortly (Sydney), and I've been contemplating a trip up to SLRV to do some of the build, but undecided still. So many options emerging now in such a short time - so good to see the aftermarket support.

If you go and have a read of my Member Intro post, I alluded to the feeling that the closest dealer (who's actually quite local to me) didn't seem enthused about the Gren. They didn't really provide answers to how the whole ordering process worked, when I'd need to do a deposit and commit, or how even a tradein of an existing car would work. The dealer had no visibility into the ordering pipeline to check how long I'd be waiting for one.

So I thought that if I approached a dealer who was really enthusiastic about them, I'd get much more concrete answers. SLRV came up in here on a number of occasions, and they were also listed in the Ineos dealer directory, so one (fateful) day, I decided to ring SLRV/Expedition HQ, and now the rest is history

You call SLVR (aka XHQ) and they want to help and will when ever they can. That said, Purnell Adventure have been very good to me as well.

XHQ are superior for after sale fitout and they fixed my electrical gremlins quickly. Most of my fit-out was done by ORS and XHQ. K&T Ballina Mechanical did the last bit by installing the rock sliders yesterday.

The Grenadier was much quicker build than the Nissan Patrol, as I could order so many accessories with the Grenadier (aux power, winch, roof rack, dual battery, lightbar, etc).