Hey Dude, if you don't like the answer don't ask the question.

I am not totally naive and driven well over a million miles over the years, my dilemma being that this particular engine, with a turbo, has 250 n/m torque and is a real flyer ,and I just don`t want to damage it.

Its just an engine, it does not have a clue what car its in and whether it has a turbo or not, they are just dumb objects regardless of all the electronics.

The one sure way to damage a new engine is to baby it too long. The bores will glaze and you will never get good power and always use a decent amount of oil.

All the handbooks I have read in recent years have simply said to drive normally but avoid full revs and full throttle for the first few hundread miles. Not flogging an engine at low speed in a high gear applies at any time in an engines life.

The salesmans words when last bought a new Ford were "drive it like you stole it".

The OP asked a question that clearly the answer was written - by the manufacturer - in the vehicle handbook. They don't just 'chuck them in there' for fun - they are for the owner to read and learn about the vehicle in question. When people quite rightly tell him the answer lies within the handbook he does not like it.

Trouble is if everyone actually read the handbook and then applied a little common sense there would be no need for forums like this.

It sometimes makes me wonder how people like myself managed for 30 or so years of driving/car owning before the invention of the interweb.

Just remembered, we read the manuals and applied common sense. Trouble is very few people have any common sense nowadays and cannot make a sensible decision without asking on a forum of some description.

Its controversial, so nobody really knows, except possibly the manufacturer, and their test results are generally secret.

Basically, the extreme choices are between babying it (as used to be generally recommended by your manufacturer), and thrashing it (the "hard", or "motorman" break in).

Manufacturer's guidelines are generally now a compromise, and, as has been said, you won't go far wrong following them, but its worth remembering that the manufacturer's primary interests are user convenience (=sales) and avoiding warranty claims. (=sales) Engine longevity (not=sales) will be low on their list of priorities.

There's quite a lot of support for the hard break-in approach, here articulated (by a bit of a self-publicising prat, but that doesn't mean he's wrong) from the biker point of view.

www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm

This evidence is, AFAIK, entirely anecdotal, so you are perfectly entitled to ignore it, especially if it comes from bikers.

Either way, try and avoid "lugging it" (low revs in too high a gear, which I tend to do) and perhaps do more frequent initial oil changes.

There's another related controversy over synthetic or mineral oil during break-in, with a school of thought advocating using mineral oil initially and then switching to synthetic later.

Just drive it gently, you will get better fuel consumption too.

Rubbish-If you don't work the motor hard during the break-in period you will end up with a tight engine that won't produce peak power and will not give good mpg.

Just don't slog the motor at low rpm and don't rev the guts out of it for the first 500-1000 miles, then just drive it normally giving in full rpm now and again for short periods.