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Boroscope

ExtraKatana

Well Known Member
Is anyone using one of these drain style scopes for $20-$30? I used an ablescope the other day and it appears to have the same camera head as the inexpensive ones. By the time you buy the Apple air box to convert from android And your up over $300. I know the ablescope has the articulating head but a lot of these others come with mirrors. Like everything, you put the word Aviation on it and quadruples the price.
 
There are a huge number of such devices that work with Android, iOS, or have a standalone display. Things to look for are the resolution of the camera, the field of view of the camera, the resolution of the display, and the ability of the device to manage the lighting. Unsurprisingly, the cheaper ones tend to do poorly at that. A good borescope/inspection camera is fantastic at its job of seeing into smaller inaccessible recesses. A bad (cheap) onetends to be really bad, frustrating, and of negligible value.

Check here (Amazon) for the dizzying array available. Unfortunately, you can't really go by the user reviews since the vast majority of these things are made in China by Chinese companies so the reviews are mostly created in Chinese boiler rooms.


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a lot of these others come with mirrors

I did some experimenting with different borescopes, from the $20ish Amazon stuff to the 3.5K Snap-On marvel... and on different engines, Rotax, Lycos and Contis; Surprise-surprise, the expensive ones fared the better.

Though the image quality (resolution, contrast, lighting) can be surprisingly good on the cheaper ones, the ability to swing the head 180° on the Vividia ablescopes makes them suited to inspect your valves/guides/seats.
Inspecting those using the mirror on the cheapies is next to impossible.
 
Vivida VA-400

Pics Monday of my exhaust valves O320 160hp 1065 hrs TTSN 1992 . Reflections , angle, etc can make each look a little wonky/different. My friend and I are rookies using, more so interpreting what I see :)

BTW this scope is what savvy maintenance contract customers have on board from Savvy.
 

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Those images look great, thanks for posting. I just tried a couple of different scopes on my cylinder, one was an Autel MV400, the other was a unit that plugged into an iPhone. I couldn’t get clear images mostly because I don’t think the scopes I used generated enough light. When I added some extra light into the cylinder, the images improved, but still weren’t that good. For sure not good enough to be confident diagnosing an issue.
 
Those pictures look a lot better than I’m able to get with my Vividia Abelscope VA-400.
 
Vividia

You may have a bad scope, especially if the image is blurred in one area.
I talked with the company on my first one and sent it back. They fixed it or made good on it without balking.
Also there are a lot of settings in the software you can tweak to get better resolution. I haven't had the time to play with all the options; the still images I get are already good; video less so.
 
and a word of warning, don’t use that new scope of yours on a hot engine :eek:
This will damage the head or the lens on most of them...
 
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