I am having a new crate motor dropped in. What should I expect after the new motor. Any special maintainence I should know about. Anything to listen for?
WHICH "new" crate engine? Roller cam?
As soon as you take delivery, find a deserted highway. Drive 20 miles out of town to full warm everything. Then turn around, get into high gear, and stab the gas pedal as hard as you can WITHOUT kicking down to a lower gear. Accelerate hard in high gear to about 4000 rpm. Pull your foot out of the gas. Coast down to your minimum high-gear speed. Stab the gas again, just like before. Repeat until it stops being fun. Avoid the Highway Patrol.
You want heavy load but not high rpm in order to maximize cylinder pressure for ring break-in. Heavy load pushes the rings against the cylinder wall, coasting provides high vacuum to pull oil up which lubes the rings and washes away the wear particles.
Changing oil at 500 miles is not a bad plan. I prefer to use an ******* oil filter--a Frantz bypass filter in addition to the full-flow filter the engine comes with. The bypass filter will clean the oil so wonderfully that you won't need excessive oil changes for break-in.
Frantz filters are listed on eBay all the time, about $50 and up. They're still available new, and Amsoil also sells bypass oil filters.
