Originally Posted by Penguin

You may be right... Actually, you probably are right.

Now, to be clear, what follows is NOT a criticism of the current thread or any of the posters (I seem to have confused someone on another thread where they took a statement of mine to be a criticism.)

Over the years I've gotten a bit weary of so many discussions without any real data. The main example was people who constantly claim the engines in today's cars do not need a break-in, as they come from the factory ready to go. So in that case, I finally popped a few bucks to get some real data. And the real data showed that, at least for for the 2004 Z4, wear in the engine in the first couple of thousand miles was about 2-4 times the wear in the second couple of thousand. So at least one things was, in my mind, settled with the data -- modern engines still have a lot more wear going on when they are new. Now the debate can at least move onto the implications of this fact.

So maybe it's my engineering education, etc., but I like to get real data, and often wax half of my vehicle's hood with one wax, and the other half with a different wax, to get some more data, since empirical data trumps theory in my book.