bigdave wrote:

4500 +

Without the "+" I think, mine seems to upshift at around 4500 in command mode

Don't worry, the engine management seems to know what the red line is - mine never makes it beyond 4200 before the next gear comes along. Mind you, that's Auto and I don't know what Manuals are treated to by the engine management; do they stop the fuel above red-line to bring it in check?

I too subscribe to BigDave's methods, and have had turbo cars with 220,000+ miles on them without turbo or auto gearbox issues.

Never ever ever red-line a cold engine unless your life depends on it; it's suicide for the engine. I keep my RPM around the 2000 mark until the temp needle is halfway.

I find my favoured red-line turbo workout is on acceleration ramps onto quiet motorways that have traffic lights controlling the entry. Wait at the red light, pushing the stick over into Sports mode then at green (not amber ) grind the accelerator pedal into the carpet (this exercises the kick-down linkage) and hold it there, allowing the auto to change up at each red-line. I do this once or twice a week. For experimental reasons I have tried it twice in twenty minutes, and was able to see light soot in the exhaust the first time and none the second, so there's a good chance it's working as an approach.

There's no point in doing this stationary - if there's no load on your engine then there's no load on your turbo; sure it's spinning but it's not working hard, and therefore it's not getting really hot nor are there massive whirlwinds of air scouring the vanes for you. Much better to integrate it into your daily drive where you have lots of nice cooling air coming through your engine bay (not that I can see any of that reaching the outside of the turbo) and work it damned hard without annoying your neighbours.

It's all down to a general rule I was told by an expert mechanic many years before electronics were used in cars.

Quote:

If there's a part that should move, then make sure it gets moved often or it'll seize up and won't move when you need it to

In this case he was referring to the waste-gate actuator on a turbo, but it seems to fit everywhere, so every week I use HDC, off-road height, all positions of the gear lever, access height, the electric park brake, high/low ratio change , ABS(I can only safely check this when it's rained and I'm on a road near where I live that always has diesel spilled on it from the newly fuelled up artics) electric windows, door mirror fold - anything that should move that I can safely exercise gets exercised.

If there was somewhere that I could cross axle the suspension near me, I'd do that too to exercise the limits of the components, but sadly I haven't found anywhere I can (legally) do this.

By the way, I was advised to ignore the manufacturers advice when running in the engine, and instead to do lots of high torque / low revs work (never even close to red-line) to force the piston rings to bed in quickly before they were forge hardened by the hammering of the high pressure diesel ignition. This approach only works in the first couple of thousand miles (after which the rings are hardened and set in position and so can no longer easily expand into the bore of the cylinder) and requires a filter/oil change after it to remove the extra swarf it creates.

I'm now at 60,000 miles and apart from during those first few months have never had to top up the oil as it remains at the top bead on the dip-stick for the full 15,000 miles. Anyone else successfully used this running in approach?

Sorry, that all got a bit big for a quick reply

Totally agree with stapldm, though sadly SWMBO gets daily use of our Disco so cannot enforce "maintenance runs" until the weekend - which is good enough I guess

stapldm wrote:

...grind the accelerator pedal into the carpet (this exercises the kick-down linkage) and hold it there...

Thanks for this tip, I had never thought of the kick-down link... I suppose that will be exercised if in command shift (manual) as well? Would hard braking (not engaging the ABS though) similarly exercise "kick-up"? Or would the occasional EPB in motion work best?

Sorry, bit