[esailor Team]

Class 2 Engineers Oral Exam Paisley 8th January 2020
GMA Candidate
1) Two stroke piston removal procedure.
a) How would you isolate the primary systems? Wanted to hear tag out and lock out.
b) Also mentioned I would tell the port and bridge, he asked why? Engine immobilised can’t move if needed.
c) You mentioned drain down the cooling to the cylinder cover, how would you do it?
i) Would you drain it straight into the bilge? I said no it would cost a fortune in additives and a very annoyed Superintendent.
d) I Mentioned risk assessment and he asked would you need to make your own or could you find it onboard already? I told him yes it would be on the SMS.
e) How are cylinder covers held down?
i) How do hydraulic bolts work? Told him about elastic deformation.
ii) One gets stuck what do you do?
iii) We got onto the scenario of a damaged thread and not elongation of the bolt/stud. How would you know the thread is damaged? Check with feelers the nut is not touching the face of the engine.
iv) How would you remove it? Needs to be cut, secure the other bolts. Told him about time management as we were now in the realms of a delay to finishing the work.
f) How is the piston cooled?
i) I mentioned LO cooled but he was more interested in water cooling.
ii) What additive is used in the water? I said sodium nitrite which wasn’t right.
iii) What would you be checking for in the cooling spaces under the piston crown? Water and oil cooled, mentioned scale build up.
iv) Why is scale build up dangerous? I gave a good explanation about scale formation and its effects.
v) What could happen if left? Overheating.
vi) What about if oil cooled? Signs of overheating.
g) What would you check for on the piston crown? Calibration tool looking for burnout.
i) What could cause this?
h) What would you check for in the cylinder cover you removed?
i) After signs of overheating again.
ii) What could cause a leaking injector?
iii) Why do you need good atomisation? This linked to the piston crown question. Also touched on the fuel needing to penetrate into the compressed air.
2) Could you tell me about A class fire protection?
a) What is A60 and A0?
i) Where would you find out what parts of the vessel needed to be protected? SOLAS 2-2
ii) You’ve mentioned about insulation and temperature rises what happened if the door handle fell off on an A60 door and you needed to repair? As long as it still conforms to A60 protection. (Gave him as much as I could remember about 2-2)
iii) What about B class?
3) Can you tell me what electrical protections you would find on a small motor onboard?
a) Mentioned phase failure (probably shouldn’t have).
b) I then said overcurrent protection.
i) What is that? Inverse time and instantaneous.
ii) How does instantaneous work? Fuses also talked about short circuits.
iii) What about inverse time? Told him bimetallic strip.
iv) Where are they located? How would enough heat from the wires be transferred to it to trip? I said copper heat-sink but he was after filament.
v) What is discrimination? Isolate/disconnect at the source as not to trip the generator or larger motors.
vi) What motor would not trip if it had overcurrent? Steering gear motor.
(1) What if there was a blackout? Motor must restart upon restoration of power.
4) What are the rules for emergency generator starting?
a) What should happen before? Standby generator should start and put itself online.
b) What should be supplied by the emergency switchboard and why?
c) What should prevent this from happening?
i) What are preferential trips?
5) If you are working on a HV system what should you do? Was after COSWAP and the fact that you should be properly trained and not work alone.
6) What are the 6 MARPOL annexes and which ones apply to engineers?
a) Tell me about MARPOL annex 6, what are the new regulations? Sulphur limits.
b) What about annex 1?
c) How does your vacuum sewage system work? Complete curve ball on this one, have no idea why he asked. Decided I’d tell him about an eductor system I’d sailed with (he’d never seen one and was interested). I didn’t explain it to well and he wasn’t convinced it would work. My advice go for the Vacs system.
90 minutes in and he decided to stop and tell me I had passed, we didn’t cover everything (boilers being the main subject) however we went into huge amounts of detail for the questions asked.

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