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      11-06-2018, 07:19 AM   #19
warrenw
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South Korea
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Drives: 19 AW M2C, 21 M340i
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Seoul

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Trying to get through break-in

Desperately trying to get through break-in - a story of pain and suffering

The title may be melodramatic, but the principle is still relevant - break in periods suck. Being my first new car I am not used to this "break-in" concept. As such a few rules may have been broken regardless. What WAS interesting to experience was feeling how certain parts started to break-in as I drove more and more. This only really applies to truly mechanical systems, and wouldn't apply to say, the "steering feel." Surprisingly enough, things like the clutch and brakes definitely "broke in" and even the engine seemed to loosen up a bit after more miles were put on.

A lot of my driving is local, during my burdensome work commute that entails driving ocer vast terrains finishing my journey after a grueling 9km - each way - I knew I had to do something otherwise I wouldn't finish break-in until next year.

So i decided to just get in the car and drive for a bit, which isn't a common thing to do here given the $6.75/gallon for premium gas. It was a holiday, "Korean Thanksgiving", and so I jumped on the freeway and just started driving.

The funny thing is, I was happy to report there was no traffic and I ended up on a newly built road that had only 2 speed cameras for about 60km, no traffic, and smooth roads! What could be better than that??



The downside to the drive though was that it was almost 3 hours on toll roads which means I gotta pay... right? Well I worked out that if I start back close to where I started from then I wouldn't actually have to pay very much. There's no way to turn around and go back the way you came on a toll road, so instead I went in an oval





Information tidbit, Korea is well known for their rest stops. They're absolutely huge, there are about 200 of them country-wide and they generate over a billion dollars of revenue annually - they're taken pretty seriously. If you think about it, it's important to have all encompassing service stations because you can't just hop on and off the expressway whenever because it's a toll road.

These places have everything - gas stations, food court, coffee, bathrooms, convenience stores, street food, clothing shops, pet relief areas, playground, etc.

Here are some pictures that I totally stole off the internet if anybody is curious.















So I stopped at a rest stop for ice cream. These things are good, but if you really want to spice up your life you have to try a goo-goo cone. Goo-goo cones are well, ice cream cones, but they're chocolate with marshmellow, nuts, chocolate sauce, pixie dust......etc.





Then I trekked home.

It took 3ish hours to do 230km, with some definite speeding in there, but also some traffic pockets. It's important to remember that almost all highways are 100km/hr which is pretty slow so it takes forever to get anywhere. It wears on you, and then you slowly begin to accept it and before you know it, you've lost your soul too!

So I set out to speed up the break-in process but I realized once I got back that... 200km-ish is only 10% of the break-in period. I still had a looong way to go....

***Note: yes, driving on the freeway is incredibly boring. However: it's also difficult to find mountain roads that are worth driving on because unfortunately, many two lane "less traveled" roads have tons of speed bumps. This is because theres some law that requires a certain amount of speed regulation per XX km of road, and they don't want to spring for speed cameras on these road types so they just threw in speed bumps. Ugh.
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