RPM Limits on new bike

Hi, I'm sure this will be in the manual when I get it but for the purpose of riding it home, can anyone tell me the running procedure for a K5 and how long before I can really let her go !

Cheers

I was told no more than 5-6000rpm for the first 600 miles. Although from all the things I've read, dumping the oil after 50 miles then just riding it (not completely thrashing it) 'normaly' isn't a bad way to go. Maybe

Official Suzuki recommendations are more or less as follows

up to 500 mi below 5k rpm
up to 1000 mi below 7500 rpm
over 1000 mi below 10500 rpm

Vary the engine speed, don't hold at constant revs. Make sure you load in both directions, ie, under decent load while accelerating but also while slowing down.
Don't use it too much at low speed, parts can glaze and will never break in, then.
Makes sure you warm it up before riding.
Don't use full throttle before 1000 miles.

That's the shortened version and is more or less what the general opinion is on the best way.

I personally more or less ignored the rev limits but only for short periods of time.

I heard that you're not supposed to let the engine warm up while bedding in, as that contributes to said glazing

Originally Posted by Flamin_Squirrel

I heard that you're not supposed to let the engine warm up while bedding in, as that contributes to said glazing

Depends how warm you like it to get, I suppose.
when I was running in I always let it warm to at least 40C then rode carefully till the temperate was above 80C. After that I rode normally without thrashing it too much.

Manual just says to let the oil circulate, so I may have been a bit liberal with my rewording.

Cool, cheers peeps!

Top info as usual

[embee]

Yes, don't leave it idling to warm up.

Start it, allow it to "settle" for say 10-20 secs, this allows the rich afterstart fuelling to ramp off and the surface temp at the top of the bores rises enough to avoid steam condensing and causing high wear rates.

Then ride off gently, avoid high load and revs while it's warming up to correct temperature.

This principle applies to all engines at all stages of their life, not just for break-in.

As Carsick says, for the first few hours use (say up to 100mls) keep the revs to the recommended values. Then treat it as a gradual process of increasing the load (throttle opening) and revs. In the early stages high revs can potentially do more harm than high load, so don't worry too much about using the throttle a bit, and vary the conditions all the time if you can, going up and down the gears.

It really is important in the latter stages of break-in (say 500mls onwards) to use lots of throttle and revs for short bursts to get it fully bedded in. You won't do any harm at all after 10hrs use, and it'll be better for it in later life.

(PS - I've worked in the motor industry designing and developing engines for 25yrs, trust me ).

Originally Posted by embee

Yes, don't leave it idling to warm up.

Start it, allow it to "settle" for say 10-20 sec

That's more or less what I meant.

I ingnored all this.. and just rode it, progresivly getting harder and harder over more miles. With a little thrash every now and again, and I had some mech tell my my engine was just fine. Though I'll never be sure untill its striped into bits.

[embee]

Originally Posted by Grinch

I ingnored all this.. and just rode it, progresivly getting harder and harder over more miles. With a little thrash every now and again,....

well that's basically it!