Borescope video/review

So I decided to blow $38 on a borescope so that I could take a peek inside my cylinders. I decided to buy the borescope below from amazon based off the price, decent quality in the video review, and the fact that it appeared to do a good job of focusing up close.

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Flexible-Inspection-Microscope-Endoscope-Borescope/dp/B007ROP3FO]Amazon.com: Image® Mini 7mm USB Flexible Inspection Camera Microscope Endoscope Borescope: Camera & Photo[/ame]

The borescope neck is a bendable metal material that feels solid, and the whole thing feels pretty solid. I had to clean the lens a few times, and the plastic over the lens seems a little cheap but it didn't appear to affect its performance. I thought the video quality was ok, good enough to see what's going on inside your cylinders.

My biggest complaint about the borescope would be that it's hard to get a really good look inside the cylinder because the scope is sort of hard to maneuver once it's inside the cylinder. Outside of the cylinder you could make the scope do a 360 degree rotation easily, but once inside the cylinder it gets more difficult to do. Also, theres a scroll wheel on the usb cable that you use to adjust the LED light brightness, but the light can be a little jumpy when you try to adjust the brightness.

Anyways, just wanted to throw this out there in case someone is interested in buying a borescope. I just got this in the mail today, so hopefully in time I'll learn how to use/maneuver it better so that I'm able to get a better look at the whole cylinder.

A few videos below, any thoughts or comments on them? My cylinder walls look like they might be scored a little bit but I'm not sure, I don't know what a cylinder wall should look like after 129k. My car has 129k on it, and its has consumed around 1qt-2qt's of oil every 4-5k ever since it was brand new. Also, it's a bit tricky to thread the camera through the spark plug hole, and the camera got a little dirty in doing so. The lens seems ok for the first video, but I think it was a little dirty for the 2nd video.

Cylinder 3

Cylinder 1

I picked up something like yours off ebay for around the same price, but have not really used it much. For getting some level of confidence they are good (ie. your piston's ringlands are good) but as you say they're pretty hard to angle just right.

I think the trick is to apply a slight bend as it's inserted and to have enough room on the 'outside' for guidance (which we don't have unless you've pulled the engine).

Anyhow, thanks for the post.

Simon.

I think you make great points. A little background, the software that comes with the camera is not very good. I thought I had taken 3-4 good videos, but for some reason they didn't save. I didn't realize this until after I put my intake back in and buttoned everything back up.

So I kind of rushed these videos, I did cylinder 3 with the engine bay as is, I just pulled the plug wire off, pulled the plug, and fed the camera down the tube. I was a little weirded out by the fact that part of my ringland was shiny silver, and other parts coated with carbon. So I put the plug back in, popped the wire on, started the car to move the piston in cylinder 1, and proceeded to take out the intake again so that I could take a look inside cylinder 1 and examine that cylinder/piston to see if it looked the same.

I tried to bend the camera before putting it down the spark plug tube, but that made it nearly impossible to feed the camera through the spark plug hole. I think it could be done, but like I said I was kind of rushing things the second time around after my first videos didn't save.

You did highlight one mistake I think I made, which is not enough room on the outside for guidance. In the first video, like i said i basically pulled the plug from cylinder 3 with everything in the engine bay as is, so i had very little room to do anything at all. I had to remove the intake to get to cylinder 1, but I still only had a limited amount of room to manipulate the camera even with the intake out.