My first week at Bates technical i walked in with very basic knowledge on gasoline engines but i did not fully understand the workings of a diesel engine. The most i had done to a engine was replace a camshaft which was easy on a gas inline 4 cylinder but with a big diesel it was much heavier which had some difficulty and being in the block opposed to being on top with a over head cam. I had little skill with most tools including precision measuring tools. I knew the course would be challenging and informative but i was never expecting the amount of knowledge i would learn in a short period of time. I am very confident going to oem training and using my base knowledge learned at Bates tech to get me certified in my career field. I am very impressed with the amount of knowledge and skill i have obtained.

My favorite portion of the class was working with other teams to get the job done. There were other students with the nearly the same engine as my team and we all shared information on various procedures which was a huge help when it came to my least favorite part which was injection timing. The process of timing injectors in a Cummins 855 series engine is extremely complicated in the oem service literature and i still struggle to fully understand the procedure being that there is little information outside of the oem manuals. During the process i felt as though i would never be able to do this on my own in the field but after a couple of failed attempts my teammates all completed a successful measurement with the help of the instructor.  
Pictured above is the first day of disassembly we had help from other teams with more experienced students to help us with this being that assembly can be a hassle if disassembly is not done correctly.

Through my time with this engine rebuild i realized that without practice there can be extremely frustrating complications. If i were to give a student advice coming into the engines class i would tell that there is always a way to fix a mechanical problem whether it's a repair or replacing components. We experienced a few minor issues with smaller components not fully functioning or parts missing from our engine which sometimes made us feel hopeless but with a lot of work we got the results we wanted. If you want desirable results hard work must be put into the project.

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