Paid $400 for a borescope last spring and it caught a cracked piston before the annual

Ben Hernandez · 2026-09-15T21:00:04.108198+00:00

I was doing a routine annual on a 172 in Riverside and almost signed off on the compression check without looking inside, but I decided to run the cheap borescope down the plug hole first. Found a hairline crack on the piston crown that the leakdown test never would have shown, and the owner was looking at a $15k engine tear down instead of a $400 scope sitting in my box. What tool did you buy thinking it was overkill until it paid for itself on the very first job?

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Paid $400 for a borescope last spring and it caught a cracked piston before the annual | Aircraft Mechanics - HW Forums