Hi,
The difference between the way old cars were broken in and new cars is
that pretty much everything has changed. The lubricants are different, the
materials are better, the quality control is better on how the parts are
machined, etc. Even the seals technology is better. WAY better.
But with repsect to break-in, back in the day, the race engine builders
would do "tricks" to get things to seat. The cam run-in was necessary, but
to seat the rings they would hand lap them to the bores using super-fine
abrasives. Then they would disassemble and thoroughly clean everything
(lots of water to rinse, rinse, rinse). The result was a good ring seal
from the get-go. Of course this process adds 10 or 20 hours to the motor
build, so it would cost $$$ if the factory did it.
If you wanted to hand lap your rings to the bores, you could avoid the
whole ring break-in, but you still need to run-in the cam, so what's the
gain?
Some of the other factors (like burning a quart every 1k miles) were
acceptable then because oil was cheap and nobody cared about un-burned
hydrocarbons in the atmosphere. Now we all _have to_ care about that stuff
because the documented costs are much higher than they could have imagined
then. Bottom line - if you had a car that burned that much oil now, you'd
be replacing your catalytic converter every couple of years. Trust me, I
had a car like that.
regards,
rml
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