I talked to the guy that built the engine and he recommended I use comp cams break in additive with 10w-30 or 40 and leave it in their untill I've got 500 miles it then change it and use my normal oil that I use,
As an engine builder I can say your last statement is about what we tell our customers. We use standard 10w30 with comp cams additive (and recommend on flat tappet motors to add at every oil change) assuming the builder lubed everything like they should we start it up bring up the RPM to about 2k get the timing close, keep an eye out for oil/coolant leaks, temperature and oil pressure. Sometimes helps to have a fan handy, also if you can infrared pyrometer for temp. Its good to have a helper one on the throttle and one inspecting. During the 15-20 min breakin of the cam it helps to lightly blip the throttle to help seat the rings. You need to get the RPMs up as soon as you can to get the lifters spinning to break in the cam right more time cranking or idling is no good for cam break in. Driving break in stop and go is best no long distance freeway at sustained RPMS, I have heard accelerate up to 30mph and let off to 10mph and repeat a few times, not something we do but sounds reasonable. We also do a 500 mile check/oil change we retighten hose clamps,, check all belts for proper tightness, check all fluid levels and look for leaks, sometimes retighten header bolts. High RPMs are not good for the first 500 miles because the bearings are still somewhat soft, they also get hardened, this is why I always use high performance bearings in my own engines.
You can use the joe gibbs oil for break in it is very good just expensive. I know a race team that is all they use not just for break in.
this is who you should have asked and followed his recommendations to start with. I asked my motor Guy that built my 347 how to break it in and what oil. he pointed to 3-4 cases of Advance Auto brand motor oil, said that't what he uses in his race motors , change it at 500 miles. as far as break in, he said he backs it out of the bay where the motor was installed and into the dyno room about 50 feet away, that's his break in mileage. I took it home, installed it......... as you see, I cut it no slack...
We can all tell you this and that.. but the very best we can truly offer you are purely generalized rules.. and some are very old antiquated ones, at that. With any flat tappet cam motor it's basically it's all about getting through the first few hundred miles and you're pretty well home free to start beating the snot out of it. Many extend that "safe time" out to 500 miles just to be safe. If your rings aren't sealing up by then?.. then you may have some bigger issues to deal with. I look at it like this. Mild to moderately powered motors are pretty forgiving and some stock hunkers can seemingly live forever while only running on 5 cylinders and eating cases of oil while doing it. A typical engine is fairly precise.. but no where near as precise as some will imagine. Not even remotely saying don't treat it like you just built a 2 billion $ lunar rocket, just that you gotta start working really hard and spending nearly twice the money for that last little bit of precision, is all. Full on extremely tight tolerance blue printing is usually beyond most hobbyists budgets and very few average re-builder shops even do it. Good ole' technique can only get the machinist so far and state of the art ultra-precise machines are where it's really at these days. Small to medium capital shops just can't afford many, or any, of them. These little short stroke and moderately long rod ratio motors have notably less thrust forces than say a stroker motor with higher thrust angles would. This is highly beneficial during break-in's as it helps reduce piston rock and propagates quicker ring seating and overall lifespan of the seal. Also consider that bore/hone techniques vary considerably from shop to shop. Just the bores cross hatch pattern angle AND depth HUGELY impact break-in time. And never forget that some shops don't use torque plates or even do plateau hones. Then we have ring designs/materials.. even face and radial thickness(tension) come in to play a considerable roll during break-in. Piston material, bore clearance related to it, static compression ratio, cam timing as it relates to dynamic compression, yada.. yada..yada. Oh.. I'll quickly add this for greater perspective on the diversity of break in times required for rebuilt/modified engines. I use a DRY film bore lubricant called.. Total Seal Quickseat.. and slightly finer 320 hone on all my personal motors. After cam break-in and fresh oil change, the flat tappet motors will fully seat to damned near maximum levels(within 5 psi) in less than 3 miles of "spirited" manually shifted driving. The roller motors fully seal in 3 quick blasts to redline. Gotta love well engineered builds with roller cams. lol All my motors run VR1 racing oil but just about any off-road/racing oil will do the same because of the way they are formulated. Which is why they are called.. "racing oil".. in the first place, right? And as for "running it to 500 miles before the first oil change" on a fresh flat tappet? That shouldn't even be debatable and any savvy builder I know would say that shows ignorance to a flat tappet cams proper break-in procedure. Keeping a considerably higher percentage of freshly ground varieties of microscopic metallic frits floating around your oil is usually not analogous to an optimum break-in procedure. Bearings and machined surface interfaces will suffer. The higher the value of my engines go up.. the more I change my oil in the first few hundred miles. Oil is relatively cheap and extremely vital in the scheme of things and quickly becomes even more critical as power and abuse levels go up. I would highly suggest talking with your engine builder and making your concerns known. Ask him about some clearance spec's and whatnot, various component/material usage as to how it relates to your specific builds requirements, break-in procedure and oil flush time-line. Maybe tell him you're one of those PITA "1%'ers" and you'd like to spare no expense(ha, we wish!.. but you simply just flat out lie at this point to manipulate further info, lol).. and you're hoping to buy extra insurance for your motors break-in procedure. See if your motor is "special" and if he has an alternate A-game recipe or not. If he doesn't?.. I'd be extremely suspect of his knowledge base or narrow mindedness. You can use a cookie cutter to make the same awesome engine all day long.. but that means next to squat for cooking times when suddenly change the dough type. We need to adjust everything according to all the variables if we want that pretty blue ribbon.
