okay, bit the bullet and got me a new truck. the dealer says there is no 'specific' break in procedures for this vehicle. its been a loooong time since i had a new vehicle and want to make sure that this truck makes it to be a member of the quarter million mile club right now, i am stuck here in baghdad, so how should my wife drive to get the best performance/reliability for the future. i have heard everything from drive it like you stole it, to baby it for the first 500 miles, then gradually increase it. also, this may be a really dumb question but- it came with the 4 speed overdrive xmsn. does that mean it is actually a 5 spd, or is 4th the overdrive. which also adds to this question, while breaking in, should she avoid using od? i searched the archives and didn't find anything that addressed this specific issue. thanks guys, and cool site.

anybody know anyone looking for a kidney? gotta pay for all these mods somehow

mike

 

I don't know the "real" answer to your question, but I would start off driving pretty nice for a few hundred miles varying speed as much as possible and maybe stepping on it here and there. I rack a lot of miles quickly and would probably do this for 2000 or so miles myself (maybe two weeks). Then I'd change the oil.

Is it a 2004 then?

 

defective is right, you'll rarely hear a right answer to this because there isn't a truley right answer i don't think.

I think for the first few thousand miles you want to be more agressive with it than you normally would, pushing it through most of the rpm ranges decently hard. I wouldn't WOT it by any means, just good hard driving. well, maybe a couple wot's here and there. I would also do a couple early oil changes, ie 500 and 1500 then 3000, and each 3000 after.

I think most importantly than what you do is what you don't want to do, and that's run it steady at a solid rpm for a long periods of times. So avoid solid highway driving.

It's a 4 speed, with the 4th gear being an overdrive gear, like a .75:1 or so. I think its fine to use it, just remember to avoid solid rpm driving. Also the most breaking occurs in the early miles so esp try to keep them hard variable rpm driving.

 

thanks for the info guys. defective, its an 03. got a good price cause the dealer wanted to clear out for room for the 04s. wife liked it better (she says the 04s seem much larger) it only had 50 miles on the odometer so it wasnt one that was abused, er test drove a lot.... i've seen pics, looks pretty nice. cant wait to get home to drive it