Why Every Car Mechanic Should Have A Thermal Camera
A thermal camera is one of the most important diagnostic tools in the tool collection of an auto mechanic. After all, it can be able to read signs that a human eye cannot. Sometimes, a person will take their car to the garage for one or two problems.
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However, when the thermal camera is used in the diagnosis of the car, more problems emerge. Many people don’t know that a thermal imaging camera can be handy more than just in the detection of cooling and heating problems in a car or for hunting at night.
Here are a few of the important things that you can do with a thermal camera:
Isolate Problems In The Engine
When a car is brought to your garage with the error sign showing on the dashboard, that does not tell you much. Even opening the bonnet and looking at the engine will not tell you much. This is where a thermal camera comes in handily, to help you diagnose the possible causes of the “check engine” light.
Among some of the things that your camera can help with include finding out whether the hose heats up too much, whether the cylinders are recording different temperatures and whether the radiator has developed cold spots. Once the engine oil heats up, if it is leaking, a thermal camera will tell you from where it is leaking.
Helps In Checking The Heating Elements
Modern cars have many heated elements. From heated seats to mirrors, it can be quite hard to know what is not right when one of them fails to work properly. However, a thermal camera can help troubleshoot the problem so that you can get to fixing things right away.
There are heating pads located behind the mirrors, windows and windshields which help in defrosting the glass. In the rear windshield, we have the small lines/wires that carry the heat to help keep it clear of fog for visibility. It can be hard to know which of these lines do not have heat, but a thermal camera can help in that. Their work is to defrost the window. If they do not work, your visibility is inhibited.
When you use a thermal camera, it will show you whether the heat is being distributed evenly. Traditionally, one would have to use ice to diagnose this problem. However, a thermal camera can pinpoint the exact areas that are missing the heat.
If a car has heated seats, the heating pads are usually placed in various positions. The pads could fail to spread the heat evenly and this would be harder to diagnose without some diagnostic tools. A camera is going to show you whether the heating pad is spreading the heat evenly to all sides.
Another area where you may want to use a thermal camera for diagnosis is the AC unit. If a car is suspected not to give the right AC output, it can be hard to isolate the problem, most likely an electrical fault. However, taking thermal images will show you whether there is heat where it should be. This saves you time.
Brake And Tire Check
When you have a slight braking problem with the car, it can be a bit hard for you to know what exactly is causing the problem. Usually, you can only diagnose the bigger problems such as one-sided brake failure because they are hard to miss.
However, by using thermal imaging, you will see where the brake lines have a problem because the camera will pick up heat signature. You can then compare the images from all the brake lines and if they are not the same, you can know where to start looking.
Electrical Fault Checks
A car has many wires, big and small running in its electrical system. Some of these wires can be deep hidden and hard to diagnose when they develop a problem. To make it easier to find wiring issues in a car, a sophisticated thermal camera can help.
First, access the wiring system, then take a thermal image of the same in different areas where you suspect that the problem could be. You can then compare the thermal image with the wiring side by side and if something is amiss, you will locate it. Just remember to take this image when the car is running.