How important is it to Break-In your truck?

Hey everyone

At about 500 miles on my 2019 TRD OR.Absolutely in love with the truck and it's exceeding expectations.

One thing I’ve noticed poking around the forums and my manual is the “break in” period” of not towing, not going high speeds, accelerating fast, etc.

I have generally been pretty light on the truck when in town and driving on the highway, but have taken it on a couple of weekend trips in the 9 days I’ve owned the car that involved dirt roads, light 4x4 (wheels slipped briefly once), filling up the bed with camping gear, going up some pretty big hills (in the PNW hard to go out camping without climbing a glacier or two), and some times I had to accelerated from fishing spots onto a 60 MPH highway. Also was going 65-70 mph or so for probably about an hour or so on the highways on both trips, though at pretty variable speeds as there was some light traffic.

Should I be worried or change how I’m driving the truck right now until I get to the 1K mile mark? I don’t want to be doing too much damage to the engine by pushing it too hard too early.

 

It's fine.

 

Its fine. I have always drove new vehicles the way I will drive them normally and have had no issues. I am also a technician for a well know boat motor manufacturer, and I can tell you their break-in period never gets followed and I have not seen an issue due to improper break-in.
I can also tell you, when I bought my Honda CBR, I found out within the first 100 miles what its top speed was (on a track, legally of course). Anyway, you will be o.k.

 

I drove truck from 4 miles on odometer until now at 6K the same way.

 

Yeah I didn't baby mine either.

 

Nice, this is all great feedback! Thanks for the contributions. These kind of echo my thoughts — so long as I'm not doing anything way crazier than I'd normally be doing with the truck, it is probably fine to drive her like I normally would, even if it's a little more aggressive than the recommendations they give for the first 1k.

 

i tuck mine in and read it a bedtime story every night. then i sing it lullabies. even after it was "broken in" he still demands the nighttime routine. still doing it today. should have never started it.

 

Right off the lot I let that puppy rev loud and high. 35k miles now and no issues. I’m not sure if this is done but I know with high end cars they’ll run them on a track to make sure everything is working properly and they run them hard.

 

Just drive the thing. It's a vehicle.

 

The break in basically says no extremes. No lugging, no long constant speeds, and no high RPMs....like any other subject you are going to get varying views but it is my belief that it is in the manual for a reason.

 

I think you should be okay.

There are two trains of thoughts that I've seen about break in periods. Some people follow the rules by the book. While others believe that it's better to drive it like you stole it to get the seals to seat properly or whatever. I don't think I've really heard either say they regretted their method.

Personally I tend to try be on the more cautious side and try to follow rules as much as possible. But it's kind of hard and takes a lot of patience to try to be gentle on the truck for that first thousand miles or so. And can't say that I babied it that first thousand like I originally planned to. Also there are times where you just can't avoid it.

It's been a couple of months since I looked but from what I recall one of the issues is that the Toyota manual doesn't really specify what the break in procedure to be. I think it just says to not drive excessive speeds or something? But it didn't really say what's considered excessive/high.

But from the sound of it, I don't think I read anything that you did that would've caused stress on your truck. I doubt you're camping gear is that heavy where it gets close to the payload capacity (900 to 1100 lbs?). And it's probably actually better to work out the 4wd system. And again, I don't really know what high speeds mean. But some of the highways around here are 65 mph and cars usually go faster than that. So don't think going 65-70 mph is that big of a deal. Especially since it wasn't just a constant cruising.

I'd be more worried about towing or hauling anything really heavy, meaning close to capacity, over a long distance in the first 500 miles or so. I'm not familiar with offroading. But MAYBE that type of scenario where the Ridgeline gave the overheated warning when TFL trucks were comparing the trucks and driving up that hill? I guess that type of driving is hard on a transmission? Even then most of the other trucks didn't have issues with that hill. They stopped with the GM twin due to the low ground clearance of the front lip and they didn't want to damage anything.

So think you should be good and hope you enjoy your truck!

 

I work on ships that carry vehicles. There's an excellent chance your truck has already seen the rev limiter at least once before making it to the dealer's lot. It doesn't matter if they're loading a ship or a train, time is money and driving slow takes time.

 

What he said

 

1) Vary your RPM’s
2) Upon start up don’t let idle, drive it slowly until engine warms up. The reason for this is at idle the top half of the motor doesn’t get much oil. By driving it slowly the oil pressure pushes oil up to top half of motor.
3) try to avoid short drives. You don’t want short heat cycle followed by cool down then back to heat cycle.

While today’s motors require less break In, following these steps will ensure piston rings seat Into the cylinders.

 

yup. I often mountain bike along a part of trail where huge trainloads of Fords are offloaded and parked, to be loaded on carrier trucks,

and the monkeys they hire to get them off the trains and into this lot will absolutely wring the shit out of every 4th one for it's little 1/10th mile drive. I hope toyota delivery chain is nicer to the toyotas...but we aren't talking about rocket surgery grade monkeys here to move vehicles around a hidden, backwoods, train yard parking lot all day.

 

Source of info on point number 2?

 

I agree with the above and have always followed same. Never had any major issues with my many vehicles over the years including the ultra high mileage vehicles such as my '96 Tacoma which has 413,000 trouble-free miles on it.
I feel Brake break-in is important. I try to avoid quick-hard stops for the first 500 miles or so.

 

Sign papers then full send.

 

Yeah...wut? Lol

 

Only if you lock your keys inside. LOL
I followed owners manual