ORIGINAL: LordFoul

> 500 miles break in pffff. If its going to break its going to break whether 1 mile or 500. If its built right it wont break.

It's actually not about the motor breaking, but getting the parts to mesh together and establish wear patterns and smooth off any rougher edges in the manufacturing. You have all kinds of metal to metal contact (pistons, rings, valves, cam, etc etc) that are not super smooth and polished when they rub together - these parts need some time at slower speeds and lower temperature to wear together. If you start by doing a lot of high speed or WOT activities, you force a lot of friction and heat early on and force the contacting parts to either melt (very slightly) or break off in ways that cause unnatural wear in the future. I've even had a mechanic friend tell me not to run synthetic in the motor for the first 20,000 miles to let the parts break in properly, then switch over and run synthetic for life. It actually worked like a charm for my 350 in my GMC truck, it runs great after 11 years and 108,000 miles and never has eaten any oil.

Haven't you ever had your breaks done and been told to take it easy for the first 100 miles to let the 2 contact surfaces wear together? It's kind of the same thing, you need them to wear together for a bit before you test them hard.

Given I'm going to want to keep my new Challenger a very long time, I'd prefer to get it from the factory before anyone messes with it and baby it for that first set of miles. Then I'll open it up a bit