[Tunnel Chaser]

If I dont break in the car will it void the warranty and if you say it does. Can you provide documentation? I can’t find it in the owners manual.

I got in it a few times and may have hit the redline. Im sure this is all stored on the computer. I’m not worried about babying the car but I am worried about any potential warranty issues.

 

[Code3100]

Just drive it easy for 500 miles, it might suck but dont want it to **** up anything in the future.

 

[Steven_sbs]

First, your 500 mile break in period is for the entire driveline: brakes, trans, diff, etc. Not just the motor. Second, if you come to the dealer with 80 miles on the odo with a snapped driveshaft and melted tire on the rear wheel wells, they're gonna know you were abusing the car, and probably restrict part of your warranty. But if you've jumped on it a little bit in the first few hundred miles... welcome to the club. Everyone has done that. Some have done it worse than others. Be nice to the car in the first few hundred miles and the car will be nice to you for a long long time. Relax and enjoy the ride.

 

[Silver Billet]

Nothing to worry about. The service manager at the dealer probably already redlined it before you picked it up!

 

[KnuckleHead]

^^^^^This.

A day after I got mine, with 19 miles on it, I checked the max speed counter and it was 94mph. I hadnt taken it over 60.

 

[19689]

^^^^^This.

A day after I got mine, with 19 miles on it, I checked the max speed counter and it was 94mph. I hadnt taken it over 60.

be comforted in knowing they test this at the factory (static) and those numbers don't mean a thing. Mine was at 180 when it arrived. The tech is supposed to erase that in PDI.

 

[Greengohellcat]

be comforted in knowing they test this at the factory (static) and those numbers don't mean a thing. Mine was at 180 when it arrived. The tech is supposed to erase that in PDI.

MY Hellcat said 337 kph, 210 mph!!!

 

[KnuckleHead]

be comforted in knowing they test this at the factory (static) and those numbers don't mean a thing. Mine was at 180 when it arrived. The tech is supposed to erase that in PDI.

Well, ok then. That does make me feel a bit better.

 

[buddyg]

They can’t void your warranty for not following a break in procedure. I never have and never will. Drive it like you stole from mile 1.

 

[Rockster]

If I dont break in the car will it void the warranty and if you say it does. Can you provide documentation? I can’t find it in the owners manual.

I got in it a few times and may have hit the redline. Im sure this is all stored on the computer. I’m not worried about babying the car but I am worried about any potential warranty issues.

Why would you not break in the engine, the car? Takes nearly no time. Helps to ensure a long and trouble free service life. Even if you are willing to risk there will be no consequences why add to your level of worry?

The car is basically a computer on 4 wheels. It would not surprise me that the factory would put something in the computer to note RPMs/speed thresholds were exceeded before so many engine hours had elapsed.

Other manufacturers even put in several or more over rev counters to record how many over revs in a certain RPM range occurred and at what time (engine run time).

Warranty claims, especially those that involve the engine, but the transmission/drive train too, are very expensive to address/honor. If I were an automaker I'd consider ways to reduce my exposure to wararnty claims arising from something the owner did or didn't do. And one way would be to log how the car was being driven, how it was being used, to detect abuse.

But I have no have nothing official that Dodge/Chrysler collects this data.

Guess you'll just have to wait and see...

 

[Borderdog]

Found this on the Dodge garage website under the demon faq.

 

[Tunnel Chaser]

Why would you not break in the engine, the car? Takes nearly no time. Helps to ensure a long and trouble free service life. Even if you are willing to risk there will be no consequences why add to your level of worry?

The car is basically a computer on 4 wheels. It would not surprise me that the factory would put something in the computer to note RPMs/speed thresholds were exceeded before so many engine hours had elapsed.

Other manufacturers even put in several or more over rev counters to record how many over revs in a certain RPM range occurred and at what time (engine run time).

Warranty claims, especially those that involve the engine, but the transmission/drive train too, are very expensive to address/honor. If I were an automaker I'd consider ways to reduce my exposure to wararnty claims arising from something the owner did or didn't do. And one way would be to log how the car was being driven, how it was being used, to detect abuse.

But I have no have nothing official that Dodge/Chrysler collects this data.

Guess you'll just have to wait and see...

I am 95% sure they will know if I redline or not.
Why don’t I want to break in the car? I have had plenty of cars from new and never once broke them in. I was hard on them from day one, and I never had an issue.

This warranty issue popped in my head when I drove off the lot. It sounds like it has valve tapping from the dealer. It only has 4 miles on it.

I drove it and hit the gas full throttle a few times. I know the engine is broken in from factory and the rest of the car is mostly untouched.

But it makes me think could they void it? If it only says recommend I assume I am good to go.

 

[DakotaGT]

You would think that if a specific break-in procedure was so critical, instructions and warnings would be plastered all over the place with the Demon paperwork we got. I couldn’t find ANYTHING included with what I received with my Demon that talked about this, other than the drag race features weren’t unlocked until 500 miles. The only place I found break-in instructions were here on the forum, and on the Hellcat owners manual I found online. That said, I am trying to roughly follow those recommendations, since it can’t hurt, and 500 miles isn’t asking for too much restraint. However, I’m pretty certain that they wouldn’t/ couldn’t void the warranty if you didn’t follow any sort of break-in.

 

[Demon221]

Break in on new cars is nowhere near as important as it was back in the day. Modern day machining tolerances along with better materials cured most of the break in problems. The most important thing is to vary the RPMs so no components develop a set wear pattern. Some people choose to vary them from idle all the way through the redline. That being said I do usually take it easy for the first 500 miles just so I don't have to worry about warranty. I still like to do the first oil change sooner rather than later even though most manufactures don't call for it. Warming the engine up is a good idea too.

 

[cleankat]

Judging by the way they advertised the car and launched it, I'd say you'd have nothing to worry about. People go nutty with the whole break in procedure thing. With that said I wouldn't be doing any crazy burnouts or anything for a few hundred miles easily. I've had my cat for over two years and have yet to do a burnout which is probably hard to believe lol

 

[Rockster]

I am 95% sure they will know if I redline or not.
Why don’t I want to break in the car? I have had plenty of cars from new and never once broke them in. I was hard on them from day one, and I never had an issue.

This warranty issue popped in my head when I drove off the lot. It sounds like it has valve tapping from the dealer. It only has 4 miles on it.

I drove it and hit the gas full throttle a few times. I know the engine is broken in from factory and the rest of the car is mostly untouched.

But it makes me think could they void it? If it only says recommend I assume I am good to go.

Unless Chrysler is dumb as a sack of wet socks I'm sure if red line is hit (or in the case of a manual exceeded (and it is possible to exceed redline in an automatic, too)) someone could know it. (With data logging -- built in by the factory -- there is a wealth of data/telemetry to be had. With my Porsches whenever I took the cars in for service the tech would connect a factory diagnostic computer to the car's OBD2 port and the computer would spend the next 15 minutes or so checking things, querying the various controllers for any errors, and sucking out "tons" of telemetry which went straight to the factory via network link with the computer. With earlier versions of the factory computers the techs could view some of this data but more recent versions the data was not exposed to the techs.)

If you have not broken in new cars/engines and apparently the cars/engines are no worse for the experience then if you want, if you want to risk it, go ahead and do the same with this car.

An engine broken in aggressively from new will make max power sooner. It may not make as much power as it would have had it been broken in *properly* but what you never had you won't miss. Also, max power will start to decline sooner, but if you don't hold on to your cars that long, for that many miles, maybe you don't care.

I have always followed either the factory recommended break in or a reasonable facsimile thereof when breaking in engines I've rebuilt. I have never had any problems either. And I generally hang on to my cars a long time.

If you know the engine is broken in from the factory you know more than me. I know some have reported the factory runs the Hellcat engine for "42" minutes or something in that vicinity with at least some bursts up to pretty high power levels. While the engine is more broken in that it would be without this it is not fully broken in. Lab and field tests have shown "break in" can continue for some thousands of miles beyond the nominal break in.

And I'm not sure the engines are still run this long at the factory if they are even run at all. Running each and every engine on a dyno is an expensive step and I would expect the factory to as soon as it is happy with the yields from the engine assembly line would cut back on this expensive step.

But bottom line is it is your car and you can treat it like you want.

 

[Kingkat]

Just only use the black key til then, put in eco mode, no brainer there

 

[Rockster]

Just only use the black key til then, put in eco mode, no brainer there

AFAIK, the black key doesn't limit the RPMs. High (too high) RPMs is one of the no no's during break in. Driving at a steady speed/engine RPMs for a "long" time is another no no and the black key does nothing to prevent this.

Really, break in shouldn't require someone have nanny. If one is mature enough to be able to afford, buy, and drive one of these cars he should be able to adhere to a proper break in with the red key in use. (The only time my Hellcat's black key has been used is when I took the car in for service.)

The bigger issue is convincing some owners a break in is necessary. And in some cases it is not if nothing untoward (apparently) happens if a proper break in is not followed. This is a problem though because it requires everyone else have the same (good) luck one owner had in not following the break in.

I prefer to play the odds, so I follow the factory break in guidelines.

Also, I have no authority to counter what the factory has to say regarding break in so I just urge new owners to follow the factory guidelines.

 

[Rockster]

I am 95% sure they will know if I redline or not.
Why don’t I want to break in the car? I have had plenty of cars from new and never once broke them in. I was hard on them from day one, and I never had an issue.

This warranty issue popped in my head when I drove off the lot. It sounds like it has valve tapping from the dealer. It only has 4 miles on it.

I drove it and hit the gas full throttle a few times. I know the engine is broken in from factory and the rest of the car is mostly untouched.

But it makes me think could they void it? If it only says recommend I assume I am good to go.

My advice to you would have been if you heard some tapping noise from the engine to refuse to accept the car until the noise was id'd and fixed. You would have probably been told "they all do that" and that's when you would reply: "Show me" and had other similar cars had their engines started up and run.

Since you have taken the car and it is making a noise that could be (could I say) be a sign of an internal engine problem were I you I'd be very good about adhering to the break procedure just to avoid the possibility of a warranty claim being denied.

Sure maybe I'm being overly cautious but given the amount of money involved better safe than sorry.

 

[1_mo_toy]

A simple question. Would you buy a used Demon or any performance car used if you knew for certain the original owner didn’t break in the motor before it was broken in? Probably not. So, why would you do that to your own Demon, warranty aside.