how are you breaking in the engine? with a flat or hydraulic tappet cam, after initial break in i will dump the oil, but why are you changing oil after a few hundred miles? i normally goto a "normal" oil change interval and just add oil to make sure it stays at full until next oil change. i would do at least 2 normal OCIs befote switching to synthetic, but that's me. im also a fan of "beating on it" vs the old school way of driving like grandma.
I am a little different. For my roller cam small blocks. Mobil One in the pan, prime the system with a drill and priming tool, then start it up. Run it at 2,500 rpm long enough to get it warm and shut it off. Check it over for leaks, loose bolts, etc. Then take it out and beat the absolute crap out of it from the first stop sign. At 60K on the short block I used 1 qt over 2,200 miles and much of that was 75-90 mph. I am not even sure it was all the rings fault even. The valve seals were also a bit hardened and the front crank seal had a seep at the time as well.Originally Posted by tayto
It's a roller cam, stock L31 to be exact. I really didn't break it in. Everything I read said I didn't need to. But first start up was on an engine stand with a carb, radiator and water pump not hooked up. I had water in the block, but it wasn't circulating and I only ran it for a minute or two at a time and didn't take it much past idle. Really hoping that's not the cause of all this. Even when I got the motor in I didn't run it real hard at first. Wish I would have now, but I was also worried about the tune and having it run too lean. Since then I've definitely taken some hard pulls on it with high load, but perhaps it was too late. I changed oil because I eliminated the factory oil cooler (wanted to rule that out as cause of oil loss) and also wanted to check for any metal on the magnetic drain plug. (only a light fuzz)
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