Chassis dyno for engine break in, Is it a good idea? Options

[nine14cats]

If all goes well The Beast™ will be back in my garage by October 28th. Randal and I can then finish all of the little things and she will be ready to go.

As the motor is newly rebuilt with ZERO hours on it, I was thinking about the best way to break in the motor. Our engine builder has given us a sequence that he uses. Our first thought was to take it to the track and use the first 2 sessions to break it in. However, there is a risk that if we run into issues we will be far from home and have to deal with the inconvenience of coming home in the middle of the day.

I have a chassis dyno that is close to me and gets $135 / hour to set up your car. The unit is programmable for the load on the car. I'm thinking this may be a much easier way to break the motor in. The dyno is located in a business park, so the owner says that 20 minute pulls are no problem. Two pulls and we should be good to go. I could then bring the car home, change the oil, and be ready for some fun!

Anyone ever done this? Engine dyno's break in motors all time, so I don't see a downside.

Any comments / experiences would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bill P.

[MattR]

unless you can apply load on the dyno, i wouldnt rely on it for break in.

to seat the rings, you use the cylinder pressure to push out the rings during the non combusting 3 cycles of the engine so they seat properly with the crosshatch on the cylinder. every time i've used an engine dyno to break in a motor, you use lots of load under low rpm to seat the rings. it usually takes 15 minutes on the motors i do after the engine is warm and then its time for full flogging. and in the first few minutes, we never went above 3-4k rpm (on a race motor) to prevent a crosshatch from snagging on a ring. this is with an aluminum liner, 2 ring iron ring, and low cross hatch (for low drag on 30 hour motors). I cant pass this off as advice for every motor, but i think a chassis dyno would be a waste.