How would you break in reman engine?

[curtis73]

The vortec fired to life today instantly; before even one full turn of the crank. Its nice having an electric fuel pump to fill the carb first :)
Its a roller cam so I know that no specific cam break in is needed. I ran it about a half hour today varying speed from idle to 2000 while I ironed out some idle mixtures and timing. I'm going to run it again tomorrow. I had a valve tick and found that one valve was forgotten completely (:eek: my mistake) so I'll get it up to temp and then drain the oil and change the filter.
How would you operate it once you got it on the lake? Keep it below a certain RPM or throttle? For how long? Occasional WOT blasts OK?

[MACHINEHEAD]

If you think about what happens at a Dyno session, you may be less forgiving. Check fuel preasure, total timing 32 for now, oil preasure, water temp. You have already broken it in. Now LEG IT.

[steelcomp]

It sort of depends on what rings you're running, but for the majority, the following holds true. Break in procedure is one of the most crucial parts of getting the best performance out of your engine. Rings don't seat unless you get some pressure behind them, and the only way to do that is run it! First two or three times you take it out, let it warm up for a few minutes at idle, and then run through some moderate acceleration bursts, maybe 3/4 throttle, putting a decent load on the engine, then back off. Try not to hold at a continuous rpm for long. Do this 5 or 6 times. Don't cruise if you can help it, or not for more than a minute or so. Then let it cool for a while. The next time out, warm it up again at idle, and then take it out and do five or six good hard, full throttle passes, about 8-10 seconds, and back off.
You're done.
If you don't do this now, right at teh very beginning, you'll never get the rings to fully seat. Do this right, and it can be worht as much as 15-20 hp over the same engine that's not broken in properly. Machinehead's right...not a lot of timing at this point, you don't want to risk detonation. Since you've already been out, I'm guessing fuel and oil were OK.
Good luck.

[curtis73]

Well, truth is, my oil pressure gauge is toast, but when I primed the pump it gave good hard feedback and it was providing plenty of oil at idle when I was tuning it. Testing the sender gave me about 110 ohms so it was making pressure. I have a new gauge on order so I'll have it in when I run it.
Temp was good. Stat is 160 and it came up to 155 on the gauge and stayed there. Manifolds and risers were warm but I could keep my hand on them.
It was kinda freaky... everything was spot on; shift cable adjustment, timing, idle mix, lucky I guess :)