Long-term update: Our Nissan Patrol LE is breaking in nicely

If you’re a regular reader, you may have already come across our numerous social-media posts harping about our new acquisition. Our brand new 2014 “zero kilometre” Nissan Patrol LE is still being broken in until it hits 1000 km, but until then, we got some essential work done on it.

Now, the theory is that most cars nowadays don’t need to be broken in, as their engines are built to much better tolerances than in your father’s generation. While that may be true, the instruction manuals of most cars still list a break-in period of 1000 km or even 2000 km. We were too lazy to even look for the manual in our car, like most owners, but we are still following some basic break-in procedures for now, at least up to 1000 km.

That generally means varying your speed as often as possible, not letting the revs go too far above 3000 rpm, and basically not trying to test the top speed straight out of the showroom. Some say you should stay below 80 kph as well, but we’ve gone a bit over 100 kph several times, and it’s all fine as long as you don’t rev the engine hard.

Even then, as per our experience, it takes as long as 10,000 km for an engine to reach its full potential, both in terms of power and fuel economy. Which probably explains why we’re doing a pathetic 22.7 litres/100 km even with all the soft driving.

On another note, the car was refusing to detect the smart key on some occasions, eventually refusing to start the engine for a full five minutes as we fumbled around, before the car felt like detecting it again. I was already lamenting giving up my “unreliable” Range Rover, but apparently when the key-fob battery is low, you can start it by pushing the starter button with the key-fob itself, to bring the key’s chip as close as possible. Since this issue is intermittent, we’re not sure if it’s related to the key-fob battery, but we decided to change it anyway.

After calling up our sales contact Asif to make sure we don’t get charged for it, we went in for an unscheduled stop at the dealer service centre and got the key-fob battery as well as the worn-out wipers replaced as items that were missed in the pre-delivery inspection. The car has been fine so far since then.

We also took up a summer offer by VKool for tinting, paint protection and interior protection for Dhs 2,499, no matter what the size of the car. The tint and paint protection are great, although we did have to go for a second time because they didn’t do the roof properly. We can’t tell what the interior protection is all about though, since it’s invisible. Let’s hope it preserves the beige bushy-cloth upholstery.

Registration, insurance and aftermarket add-on costs are not added to our total running costs.

Original Mileage When Bought: 100 km
Latest Mileage To Date: 600 km
Latest Average Fuel Economy: 22.7 litres/100 km
Cost of Latest Problems: Dhs 0
Cost of Latest Maintenance: Dhs 0

Total Non-Fuel Running Cost Since Bought: Dhs 0

Read all 2014 Nissan Patrol LE long-term updates