How to plan road trip back from Dan Cummins to NC to stay within the break in limits and go on some curvy roads?
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Tail of the Dragon is like 200+ miles away and it was awesome. You won’t be fully broken in but you’ll already be able to exercise the RPM range by then. The turns are very tight so you won’t be working the engine super hard and can get a good flow in the turns. Just a little bit of gas but more on the brakes, but not too bad as long as you’re not carrying excessive speed before the next turn. Don’t treat it like you’re in a hill climb competition and just enjoy the drive and you’ll be fine!
2nd that get a map advice.
Just look for roads/highways that get you from where you start out to where you want to end up and which have lower speed limits. And it is easier to vary RPMs on these roads to avoid prolong running at a steady RPM.
A downside -- more so in the evening/night time/early morning hours -- is deer.
Also, you have to watch your speed and be sure to obey other traffic laws. With a new car it will be an object of interest and if there's any indication of any traffic law violation you'll get pulled over.
Or you can just take the freeway.
A few weeks after I bought my 2018 Scat Pack -- 16 miles away from home -- I bought a new MINI JCW 90 miles away from home. With the Scat Pack I was in an area I was very familiar with and had a nice "back road" route to use to get from the dealer to my house.
With the JCW I'm sure I could have worked out a back road route but I was tired and wanted to get home. Also, my sister had accompanied me and she was driving my Scat Pack and wanted me to follow her home and she wanted to use the freeway. So that's what we did. She drove a bit faster than I so I lost sight of the car after a ways but she knew the way to her house and so did I. Ended up driving to her house making sure she got home ok then drove on to my house.
The JCW was equipped with a 6-speed manual and I just watched my speed and occasionally selected a lower (or higher) gear to vary engine RPMs.
Then a couple of months later I bought my new Hellcat at a dealer over 40 miles from me. Again, I just took the most direct route -- freeway -- back to my house. I kept the speed down and used the transmission (A8) in manual mode to vary RPMs. Speed wasn't really an issue since the freeway was quite busy and I couldn't have run 65mph (the limit) if I wanted to.
Just look for roads/highways that get you from where you start out to where you want to end up and which have lower speed limits. And it is easier to vary RPMs on these roads to avoid prolong running at a steady RPM.
A downside -- more so in the evening/night time/early morning hours -- is deer.
Also, you have to watch your speed and be sure to obey other traffic laws. With a new car it will be an object of interest and if there's any indication of any traffic law violation you'll get pulled over.
Or you can just take the freeway.
A few weeks after I bought my 2018 Scat Pack -- 16 miles away from home -- I bought a new MINI JCW 90 miles away from home. With the Scat Pack I was in an area I was very familiar with and had a nice "back road" route to use to get from the dealer to my house.
With the JCW I'm sure I could have worked out a back road route but I was tired and wanted to get home. Also, my sister had accompanied me and she was driving my Scat Pack and wanted me to follow her home and she wanted to use the freeway. So that's what we did. She drove a bit faster than I so I lost sight of the car after a ways but she knew the way to her house and so did I. Ended up driving to her house making sure she got home ok then drove on to my house.
The JCW was equipped with a 6-speed manual and I just watched my speed and occasionally selected a lower (or higher) gear to vary engine RPMs.
Then a couple of months later I bought my new Hellcat at a dealer over 40 miles from me. Again, I just took the most direct route -- freeway -- back to my house. I kept the speed down and used the transmission (A8) in manual mode to vary RPMs. Speed wasn't really an issue since the freeway was quite busy and I couldn't have run 65mph (the limit) if I wanted to.
I'd probably run down 627 south and go through Winchester then continue 627 where it meets 75. There's a Love's truck stop there and would be a good place to take a break, get a drink and let it cool down a little. Always plenty of parking there away from the building out the way.
Then from there I'd go 25 south around Richmond then down through Berea, Mt Vernon and on into London.
At that point you've got 100 miles on the car and you're at I-75, so you can jump on 75 and head home.
It's really that first 100 miles that's the most critical so I'd have no problem with this.
If you want some more, just follow 25 and pickup 75 later.
And I would only do this in the daytime. I wouldn't ever ride these back roads at night with all the deer around if I didn't have to.
Enjoy the ride!
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Then from there I'd go 25 south around Richmond then down through Berea, Mt Vernon and on into London.
At that point you've got 100 miles on the car and you're at I-75, so you can jump on 75 and head home.
It's really that first 100 miles that's the most critical so I'd have no problem with this.
If you want some more, just follow 25 and pickup 75 later.
And I would only do this in the daytime. I wouldn't ever ride these back roads at night with all the deer around if I didn't have to.
Enjoy the ride!
Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
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I wouldn't do it driving straight through, that means night in the mountains and on back roads. Bad idea imho.
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Depending on where you are heading Devils Whip is a nice drive. We go between Iowa and Charlotte and really any of the roads (even right near the interstate) are a pretty nice drive. This time of year you have to watch temps/weather closely though. It can be ok during the day and snowing/sleeting at higher elevations by evening or early morning.
With a new car I'm more the get it home as soon as is reasonably possible.
A new car IMHO is not the car to take on an extended pleasure drive. Being new it could manifest a problem.
My preference is get the car home. Become more familiar with it. Drive it around town and complete the initial break in and also develop some confidence the car is not going to manifest any new car problems.
I will throw a longer drive at the car. For example with my Hellcat I drove it to my sister's house about 60 miles away from where I lived. The drive involved some freeway and some secondary roads. A nice change of pace from the almost 100% freeway work commute. I was not far from "help" should the car manifest a problem, but I had spent enough time with the car that I felt it was not going to develop a problem.
Based on your experience. That's great. When you offer to step up and warranty a new Hellcat if the owner follows your advice and the engine develops a problem I'd be more inclined to follow your advice.
Does the vehicle have a data recorder that stores every mile of performance every driven? The burden of proof is on them to deny your warranty.
let's say, at mile 10,666, your engine or drive train has a problem, how are they attributing that to your first 500 miles, with proof?(Hell, I'd even go as low as 1,666 for my example)
How are they accounting for the miles run at the factory, in the factory's lot, during shipping, and at the dealer before you picked it up? What if someone before you didn't follow the mythical break in procedure one or two times (in other words, stomped on it like a cat out of hell)?
I hope all you break in procedure oathers plan to get every oil change completed at the dealer until mile 36,0xx so the 6mth/6k miles is accurately recorded. I'm way more concerned about them calling that out than some 500 mile break in BS from God knows how long ago with no records, because that CAN be tracked and people HAVE been screwed over.
BTW, my first oil change on my 2020 WB HC was at the dealer. They ran out of Pennzoil synthetic and the tech had to go down the street to get oil at Autozone. The service writer told me this, followed with, "Don't worry it still has Mobil 1 synthetic". Well, that's supposedly not allowed by FCA and warranty.....but I didn't give a shit and didn't make a fuss....I'm pretty sure my car will live!
I'm not privvy to what Dodge gathers in the way of telemetry but I know other car makers gather quite a bit of data. With my German sports cars every time I took the car in the tech connected a factory diagnostic computer to the car and initiated a scan of all controllers. At first the data was readily available for viewing by the tech. In one case he even printed out a page of data for me. There were pages of data collected. Then at some point the diagnostic computer was modified to do this in such a way the tech was hard pressed to view the data. The data was collected as before but just automatically sent to the factory with no intervention required by the tech.
The technology is in the air and every automaker breathes the same air so I would be surprised if Dodge didn't gather while not every mile of telemetry it still gathers data of interest.
One interest would be how the vehicle is treated and at what engine run time/odometer reading. If I were an automaker I'd certainly gather this and other data too.
There is no reason to store every mile of data. Although that, or more, can be done. Some years ago I wrote software for an OBD2 trip/data logger which recorded speed every second and RPMs and other telemetry every 5 seconds and logged acceleration/braking events and max speed, idle time, etc. and all were timestamped. Did not require a supercomputer or loads of storage space. Just a small 32-bit microprocessor with an EEPROM.
Even if the factory collected nothing I still am aware that a new engine should be treated differently than one with more run time/miles on it. When I buy a new car I buy it with the intention of keeping it a long time. And I want as long and trouble free service life from the car, its engine/drive train, as is reasonably possible.
Lab and field tests have found an aggressively broken in engine will make max power sooner. But the engine power will drop off sooner too as the engine accumulates more miles/run time.
Since my usage of my vehicles doesn't require the engine's max power early I am content to wait the break in miles before I push the engine hard.
Then when I do push the engine hard I do so knowing the various critical bearing surfaces, mainly the cylinder wall/piston/rings and lifter/cam lobes, have developed surface finishes which are conducive to withstanding the loads my more aggressive driving subjects them to with no issues.
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