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Are they fact or fiction?? I am sure many opinions will vary on this subject! Here is mine and mine only!
Many years ago now at a boat dealership in Conway South Carolina I was buying a 35 horsepower Johnson outboard! I asked the mechanic there about the break in period for the motor, here is what he told me about that subject!
The mechanic told me to run the motor right out of the box wide open if I wished to, you aren't gonna hurt it he said! If it does fail its under warranty, bring it back and we will fix it! He went so far as to say that the break in period in his opinion was just a bunch of bull!
The Johnson ran for many years with no problems then one day it blew the head gasket on a fishing trip to Santee Cooper! I had the head gasket renewed and the water pump and ran it for another year or so before trading it! I got another OMC product,,a 30 Evinrude. Ran it wide open out of the box,,never had a problem with it over the years,,just routine maintenance! In fact, I owned three of those motors,, never had a major problem with any of them!
In 1993 I purchased a 40 Mariner Magnum 4 cylinder 2 cycle outboard! I ran it hard right out of the box and after 11 seasons it finally quit running! During that period, one water pump and a new oil tank was all that engine required to keep it going during all that time! I gave the Mariner to the dealer and bought a new 40 Mercury in 2005, which I ran hard right out of the box also, its a 2 cycle machine as well! Runs great after about 40 hours of use!
I also had a 140 Evinrude on a 19 foot boat back in the 80's, it never gave me any problems either! maybe I am lucky,,maybe not. I am not saying break in periods are not necessary with outboards,,but they haven't been in my experience in many years of boating! Just my opinion,,not anyone else's except the mechanic down in Conway SC!
I have a 15 horse Yamaha on a 14 foot jon boat as well. Ran it hard right out of the box,,50 hours on it,,not one problem so far, runs like a top! All the outboards I have owned over the years were used in both fresh and salt water! I always flushed the motors after salt water use with fresh water and did the required maintenance!
You can do as you wish, but the markup and high cost of an outboard warrants a proper break-in in my opinion. I'm not a millionaire so my outboards get broken in per the manufacturer's specifications. 11 seasons on that Mariner 40 is not a long time and you only changed the water-pump impeller once? I would think with proper maintenance that an outboard should last a lot longer than 11 years.
At least with car engines, not running for extended periods at the same rpm is more important than not running at high rpms for short periods. Don't know if the same applies to marine engines but I imagine that it would.
I believe Marine engines (outboards) are made to run at higher RPM's than automobiles for extended periods of time! Even when I buy a new car or truck and have to go on a long trip with that vehicle,,I drive it at highway speeds even though its new! Never had a problem with that!
You can look at the pictures of pistons and logic as it makes good sense that you only have a small window of opportunity to properly seat your rings. Also make sure you are not running synthetic in the first break in cycle as it hinders proper seating.
Just a question....if you ran it wide open on the first trip and the engine blew
would you have it repaired under warranty and say you broke it in according to the manual or would you eat the coat of the engine? If you say the latter that one of the reasons engines coat as much as they do. There are so many reasons to break in a new engine I don't think I could list them all here.
Yamaha recommends that the first 2 to 3 hours the boat be broken in by the dealer prior to delivery to the customer. The instructor at the Yamaha seminar last Wednesday said, "I would not deliver a motor until it had at least 3 hours on it." Of the dealers that were there, the ones that do a 2 to 3 hour break in prior to delivery have significantly less warranty issues than those that do not. This holds true particularly with the HPDI motors. The failure rate goes down dramatically when proper break-in procedures are followed! With nearly all new motors there is a computer that can be accessed that will rpint out the hours, RPM ranges and time at RPM. We joked around about a customer that said he followed Break-In proceedures to the Letter, upon pulling the engine data it was found that the engine hat hit the rev limiter over 35 times in the first 4 hours!!!! And had spend a signigicant amount of that time in the upper 90% of the RPM Range! We can only imagine that he was doing some serious wave skipping........even though he vehemently denied it even after presented with the print out. Go figure.
Some manufactures now break thier own engines in by running them at the factory for longer periods of time. This has helped weed out problems before delivery.
It's even more of a tattle tale on cars - a dealer once reported on a new car that the suspension was making some noise and was possibly defective....It was a dealer demo and the dealer's son was driving it the night before. Upon hooking up the diagnotic computer, it spit out a report from the ABS sensors that said:
"At 12:47 am on 9/20 - the car was doing 72 mph when all 4 wheels left the ground"
Upon closer interroragtion the son admitted to jumping railroad tracks the night before....
we warrantied the bushing replacement if he promised to ground his son for a while
Everyone has opinions on things,,cars, outboards,,etc, etc,,I appreciate them all, not saying I am right, not saying I am wrong,,just my experience with boating over many years!
And yeah, I know about the tattle tale modules on all the new machines, ,doesn't bother me one bit!!
Most of theese engines were small horespower but I still think you got lucky. I beleive you wouldnt get away with it on a large higher horespower enginge. I have had 5 different evinrude engines sieze up, not during the breakin but after they were a couple years old. Now I carefully follow the breakin instruction that come with my new outboards. Repairs just cost to much to not take a few hours to do it right.
Barrell
Boat motors and motorcycles. Drive em like you stole em.
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Boat motors and motorcycles. Drive em like you stole em.
more true than false...merc tells me they have more problems with engines that are "babied" than those that are run at the proper WOT times required during break in - primarly those that are babied, run higher probability of burning oil due to inadequate ring seating....
The problem is that most guys who baby a motor end up loading it excessively. Let her spin, revs wont hurt, they will help. Just dont bog and load the motor heavily. Thats what I pulled all my PVS plugs when I broke in the ne powerhead. So it wouldnt load the motor getting up on plane. A small prop that allows less load and more varied rpm isnt a bad idea during the initial hours either.
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You can look at the pictures of pistons and logic as it makes good sense that you only have a small window of opportunity to properly seat your rings. Also make sure you are not running synthetic in the first break in cycle as it hinders proper seating.
Hey, thats my secret. But really, I've been doing the motoman on last last 5 bikes. Same holds true on most gas engines. The problem with most folks is they baby the engine, thats the worst thing to do, your rings won't seat right.
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Outboard Break In Periods 
It will tattle tail on you in a heartbeat. 
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