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Help read the borescope pictures

liuk

Active Member
Hello all, I recently did the condition inspection and asked the A/P to take some borescope pictures for me. The pictures are attached below. The engine is an O-360-A1A with about 500 hours.

Based all the online reading I did, it seems the exhaust valves are all pretty healthy. But there was no mentioning at all about how the intake valves should look like, and I found some asymmetric patterns on the intakes.

So my questions are: do the intake valves matter at all? Or more specifically, is there anything I should be concerned about the intake valve pictures? Thanks a lot!
 

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Hello all, I recently did the condition inspection and asked the A/P to take some borescope pictures for me. The pictures are attached below. The engine is an O-360-A1A with about 500 hours.

Based all the online reading I did, it seems the exhaust valves are all pretty healthy. But there was no mentioning at all about how the intake valves should look like, and I found some asymmetric patterns on the intakes.

So my questions are: do the intake valves matter at all? Or more specifically, is there anything I should be concerned about the intake valve pictures? Thanks a lot!

The darker colored spots on the intake vavles are where oil or gas dripped down the stem and soaked the deposit layer, creating the darker color in that area. TYpical intake deposits are usually light grey in color. When wet, they get darker.

Larry
 
I'm not an A&P, but have done a lot of research and do my own borescope and compression checks every time I change oil. From all the photos of valves I've collected showing both the good and bad none of your photos fall into the "bad" category. How were your compressions during inspection?
 
I'm not an A&P, but have done a lot of research and do my own borescope and compression checks every time I change oil. From all the photos of valves I've collected showing both the good and bad none of your photos fall into the "bad" category. How were your compressions during inspection?

Thanks! The compression was actually pretty good, 78/80 for all 4 cylinders.
 
Your valves all look all absolutely normal.
Larry is (of course :)) correct for the intake valves stained by oil. If you use your borescope pointing to the bottom side of the jug, you might even find some oil. Mine is the same, and has been so for the last 1K hours. All‘s good, fingers crossed 🤞🏻
 
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