I bought a Nanda break in bench for my last engine and used that along with a temperature loop and a servo controller that hooked up to my laptop to control the throttle and read the temp sensor. The engine is the best I've ever had. You should heat it up 3 times with a heat gun before you ever turn it over. 3 times to let the heat soak into parts and not just the outer cylinder. I have a tiny heat sensor that can fit down a glow plug hole. I put that in to test this out. It takes two to three cycles of heating to get it all hot. You can get some USP castor from the drugstore and add a little to the first couple of tanks to make sure you are getting good lubrication. This is especially helpful if you have to lean the engine out a bit to keep it running. Get it to at least 170 as quickly as possible. I heated mine to 140 before trying to start it up the first time. Vary the throttle and never just let it idle. By the third tank I was running mine at 3/4 throttle no problem. Find somone who is familiar with airplanes and ask them how they break in engines. I run dragsters so its not possible to bolt the engine in the car and break it in that way. However if you have the bucks I'd get the bench. Much easier to keep an eye on the temp and make sure you don't run out of fuel. And when you stop it you can immediatly put that piston at BDC so it won't hang up on you as it cools. The prop provides the required load for the engine and keeps it nice and cool. In fact I had to make up a can to go over the cylinder to keep the temps up. I redid this putting holes a heating element and a fan so I can heat the engine this way if I need more heat to get the temp up while its running. Its very important to do a good job breaking in the engine. Go slow let it cool off for an hour between tanks so the metal fully destresses. Make sure you have plenty of smoke when you hit the throttle and vary the throttle. Now once you get it broken in you need to keep it from suffering from the residue of the nitro combustion. Commonly called afterun maintenance. You don't have to do this immediatly after you run. But you do need to pull the fuel tube off the carb so the remaing fuel can evaporate out of the carb. Nitro makes nitric acid during combustion and you need to get this out asap to keep the bearings from pitting. I take the backplate and head off within 24 hours of running and spray out the motor with B-12 Chemtool carb cleaner. You can use brake cleaner too but I figured carb cleaner would be better since its designed to burn and leave no deposits. Dry it all out then spray in a little Corrosion-X and spin it over by hand to distribute the oil. Button everything back up and you are set. The Corrision-x actually makes the parts slicker over time. Best stuff I've found for motor maintenance.

Griz