Is it OK to drive my brand new Subaru Crostrek long distance?(750 mile round trip) It has about 150 miles on it.
Don’t know why not, check your oil when you stop for fuel.
Other than that, enjoy your trip.
2 Likes
Just make sure to follow any break-in instructions in your owner’s manual. Often they say not to keep a consistent speed for a long time, so you might avoid using your cruise control or you might even jump off the interstate for part of the drive.
4 Likes
I had to do the same thing a few years ago. I varied my speed and did some rapid accelerating to help get the rings seated. Luckily, we were heading for a mountain destination which entailed going uphill and around curves.
As mentioned, starting out with brand new car and driving at constant speed on the interstate will not seat the rings properly and you may end up with the vehicle using oil for the rest of its life.
My car in question now has 63,000 miles on it and I have yet to add any oil between the 5000 mile changes.
1 Like
Yes.
You’ve driven the new vehicle a long enough distance that if a break in procedure was required, it was performed.
Tester
In the glove box you will find an owners manual. If it isn’t there, go back to the dealer and report it missing, they should replace it for free. At the back of the owners manual is an index. Look up “break-in” in the index to see if there are any special requirements. If it is not listed in the index, you are good to go.
If you are unsure and want some extra assurance, here is an old timers trick for a quick break-in. Put the vehicle in manual shift. Take off with at least 25% throttle, 50% would be better. Use the paddle shifters to upshift as soon as you get the up arrow allowing the upshift. You want to keep the engine in as low an RPM range as possible and under as much strain as possible.
You do not need to exceed 50 mph and a couple of passes will do the trick. Be sure to do this on a road with plenty of room and NO traffic.
A variation on this would be to get up to about 50 mph, put it in manual and make sure it is in 6th gear on the display, then let the car coast down to about 30 and then press on the gas as hard as it will allow you to without automatically downshifting on you. If it won’t allow you to do this in 6th gear, 5th would be OK but that is the lowest gear I would use. About three 30-50 passes should be plenty.
FYI, none of this is really needed, but there is the info if you want to use it.
I’d probably wait until it had around 1000 miles of errand-running and driving-to-work city-type driving on a new car myself, just to error on the safe side, but I doubt that’s actually necessary. The manufacturers are aware people buying new cars like to do a road trip right off the bat to see how it works, uncover hidden flaws, etc. So they design the engines to handle this sort of thing.
The last Subarus I owned happen to be 2007 Outback and 2007 Impreza: first one of my wife, second one was mine. Same 2.5L EJ engine.
Both had a clear description of “break-in” period with RPM limits not to exceed.
Later, my wife confessed that she did not follow it very strictly, I’ve made that first 1000 miles very carefully.
I know that 2 cars do not prove much, but Impreza’s oil burn was almost not detectable on 5000 miles OCI, Outback burned 1-1.5 quarts on the same OCI.
I guess you still have to pay attention to the break-in procedure, as I do not believe any major mechanical breakthroughs happened in the industry in last 10 years.
thank you for the helpful info
manual says do not exceed 4k rpm during break in. and do not drive at steady rpm’s for extended periods. but it does say to mix city driving which will have varying rpm for sure and hwy driving which will have mostly steady rpm. a car with a cvt trans will adjust the rpm up/down even while cruising on the hwy. but i also think there will be periods of time where you stay at 1 rpm. its a 3-4hr drive? i would not worry
That’s actually considered normal. Subarus are notorious for it. I own one myself, and not having an issue, but I understand it’s something like 1 in 50 will burn a significant amount of oil between oil changes.