Our engineers were on-site recently, carrying out a top-end overhaul on an emergency generator engine when they came across an issue that is often overlooked.
But if left unchecked, it can drastically impair your engine’s performance.
As part of the works, our team inspected the magnetic speed pickup…
You can see from the picture below that the flywheel magnetic pick-up was covered in a 1mm depth of black dirt.
The dirt on the probe was deep enough that it was actually rubbing on the flywheel teeth and could have been enough of a “shield” to corrupt the signal from the flywheel teeth to the probe, leading to issues with starting and running performance.
In the past, we’ve attended engines that refused to start and discovered the cause was solely debris on the magnetic pickup.
Once the pickup was cleaned, the engine started straight away.
As a safety-critical engine, you would want to know it would start when called upon and because this component sits unseen in the flywheel housing, it is often overlooked.
