[Formerly Steve Wilkinson]

The basic thing to remember in breaking in an engine is that high piston pressure is worse than high rpms. In other words, worrying about keeping the car under 2,500 or 3,000 while accelerating with strong throttle pressure is worse than winding the engine to 4,000 or 4,500 while driving as though you're stepping on a raw egg. It's also worse to over-baby an engine during break-in; you need to vary engine speed and throttle opening. If you drive for 1,000 miles at 2,500 rpm without ever accelerating moderately, your engine will never break in. Basically, you need to go through a program of starting out the break-in mileage relatively gently but soon start making the engine do a little work, then a little more work, making it go through various regimes of rpms and throttle pressure, fairly frequently varying them. And above all, worry about flooring the throttle, not about whether you tak ethe engine to 5,000. After all, one of teh first things you need to do is set up the distributor timing, and on my engine, this required me to run it at 6,000 rpm for a few moments before the car was ever on the road. Didn't hurt it a bit.

Oh, and consider a couple of early oil changes. I changed my oil and filter after the first 20 minutes of running (on jackstands at about 2,500 rpms, as I remember, to break in the cams) and then again at 500 miles and 1,500 miles, examining the filter at each change.

Stephan