Engine Repair Diagnostic Strategies/Compression Testing - Essay Example

Engine Repair Diagnostics Strategies Troubleshooting an engine that does not start Testing a starter needs to be done in the aircraft while the starter has been set in its failure mode. An individual should not use jumper cables to test airplane starter systems. Instead, an analog voltmeter needs to be used if possible. If likely, inspect the starter visually. An individual may also interview the operators and the pilot of the plane for the plane’s starting history. Signs of smoke or burning odor from the plane’s starter, long cranking periods, a starter spinning faster with no prop movement, a cracked starter mount, grinding noise, damaged ring gear and oil in starter are normally signs that the plane’s starter needs to be repaired.

A helpful test is removing the starter so that it may be repaired or overhauled (Tumer & Bajwa, 1999). How can you determine if a cylinder is damaged?Failures in the cylinder mostly cause a fractional power loss and at other times it causes a full power loss. Cylinders have artificial steel barrel combined to a head casting with aluminum alloy. An individual may know if a cylinder is damaged when the barrels in the cylinder wear slowly. Excessive wear of the cylinder barrels are identified at inspection by borescope inspections and compression tests.

Also, when the cylinder suffers failures, its head may separate from the cylinder barrel and a dramatic sound is heard (Tumer & Bajwa, 1999). Damaged components in the cylinder may be identified when the aircraft is serviced regularly. On the other hand, the damaged components may be identified when there is loss of compression and spark in the cylinder. ReferenceTumer, I. Y., & Bajwa, A. (1999, June). A survey of aircraft engine health monitoring systems. In Proc. 35th Joint Propulsion Conf.