Hands-on diagnostics, engine systems, and mechanical repair · Petrol & Diesel
Before the simulations. Before the FEA. Before the CAD models.
There was grease, a torque wrench, and an engine that wouldn’t cooperate.
What I Did
As an apprentice technician, I worked directly on petrol and diesel vehicles : full teardown to reassembly, not just observation. This is where I learned what mechanical engineering actually costs when it fails.
No simulation tells you what a worn piston ring feels like under your hands. No textbook captures the exact moment you hear a misfire and already know which cylinder before you plug in the scanner.
This is where I built that instinct.
Systems I Worked On
Engine Teardown & Rebuild
Disassembled and reassembled petrol and diesel engines at the component level : pistons, valvetrain, crankshaft, seals, gaskets. Learned failure modes by seeing them firsthand: glazed bores, worn cam lobes, spun bearings. Understood tolerances not as numbers on a drawing, but as the difference between an engine that lasts and one that doesn’t.
OBD Diagnostics
Used OBD-II scanners to read live sensor data, pull fault codes, and trace faults to root cause : not just replace parts until something worked. Learned to read freeze frame data, monitor MAF/MAP/O2 sensor behavior under load, and distinguish sensor failure from actual system failure. Diagnostics as engineering, not guesswork.
Suspension & Brakes
Worked on full suspension assemblies : control arms, ball joints, wheel bearings, struts. Brake system service including disc resurfacing, caliper inspection, and hydraulic line bleeding. Learned how vehicle dynamics translate from theory into parts that wear unevenly when geometry is off.
Transmission & Gearbox
Assisted in gearbox removal, inspection, and reinstallation on both manual and automatic units. Identified wear patterns in synchromesh assemblies and clutch packs. Built an early intuition for drivetrain behavior that directly informs how I model torque loss and powertrain dynamics today.
What This Built
Engineering school teaches you to model a system.
The workshop taught me to read one.
The ability to hear a knock and hypothesize the failure mode before touching a tool : that’s not something you get from ANSYS. It comes from pulling apart enough engines to know how they die.
Every thermal simulation I run now is informed by having held an overheated head gasket. Every drivetrain model I build is grounded in having felt a transmission that lost its synchro.
The physics was always real. I just learned to see it before the software does.
This experience directly informs my simulation and validation work : bridging the gap between what models predict and what hardware actually does.