Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow 101

Had a great weekend down at the Annapolis School of Seamanship, taking their Basic Diesel course. For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, you will know that I have a mistrust, nay a loathing of engines. Why? Well, truth be told, I just don't know the first thing about them. Put it this way, a friend asked me recently how many cylinders my engine had and I stared at him embarassed and said 3 or 4. Now that we are in possession of a boat with a large'ish Diesel engine (a Westerbeke 33HP), I figured it was time to learn how the damn things work. I found the Annapolis School of Seamanship online and I figured, that they had a nice web site, a great name and a nice-looking 2-day course on marine diesel engines so I signed up. It did not disappoint. In fact, it was one of the best courses I have taken. They break the course down into four well-structured modules, mixing up how marine diesel engines work, taking an engine apart, trouble-shooting, hands-on fixing stuff and problems-solving. They also provided Nigel Calder's Marine Diesel Engines as course reading material. The two instructors were excellent:  John, a very experienced skipper provided the operator''s perspective and Scott (pictured here), a professional mechanic brought more-in-depth knowledge. Scott had a permanent patient but slightly weary look on his face and John had some great stories often about cock-ups he had been involved in. This format worked well. The class of 16 were mostly experienced sailors and motor-boaters who made for a good discussion, great questions and some good break-time chatter about boats and places to sail. Twenty five pages of notes later and a permanent smell of diesel on my hands, I have gone from clue-less to having a clue. Certainly not an expert and I will no doubt forget most of what I learned before the season starts but I feel like I have an platform to build on. Well, at least when I write checks to fix stuff in future I will know what I am paying for. Hey, who knows I might even fix some stuff myself. PS: The subject of this post is how you remember the stages of a 4-stroke engine, i.e. air is sucked into the cylinder then squeezed (compressed), heating it up; as fuel is injected into the compressed and hot air it goes bang (combustion) and out is blows (exhausts).