Isn’t it #5?
You are right, according to the colors right it is #5!
I don’t have my own plane and maintenance is done by the clubs where I rent but this is such a good read! Why don’t they teach us those things in theory courses but gives us so much useless information to remember (until the exam)…
That is indeed a very good article. Everyone should read it.
Why don’t they teach us those things in theory courses
Because there is no need to know any of this in a certified aircraft. The main purpose of certification of a particular engine in an airframe is to make sure the engine will operate satisfactory and safely with the set of instruments it has at the time of certification.
PPL is private pilot license, not private flight engineer license or private test pilot license.
The solution to this is to bring aircraft piston engine technology up to the current millennium. Austro and Rotax are two examples.
Looking at the comments below, I must say I agree with the first one. Bush mentions two examples, both aircraft has EMS, yet both had their engines destroyed. He then goes on to say that installing EMS will save your engine. Strange conclusion.
The lessons:
I would imagine that even a single clogged injector would show the fuel flow to be out of spec. But it would be glaringly obvious on an EDM700 (or similar).
One problem is that the factory analogue fuel flow gauges don’t have much accuracy, so you need to get used to what reading it shows when things are “good” and check for that.
On the TB20, I check for 23 USG/hr and usually it is between 22.8 and 23.2. It should be MP (i.e. QNH) dependent.
But, as that Lancair pilot found, having the instrumentation is no good if you don’t watch it, or don’t even know what it does.
Would there be some sort of audio alarm once a cylinder goes above a safe temperature? The article seems to suggest it.
I might not have a degree in aeronautical engineering, but I’m pretty sure that even if I wasn’t watching the monitor, if I got an alarm that one cylinder went too hot, my first reaction would be to pull back the throttle, at minimum leaving just enough power to maintain level flight. If I’d any reasonable altitude, then I’d pull it back further.
If nothing else, it would buy me thinking time.
But for some reason these two pilots did not do that. I wonder what would have lead them to leaving full power in?
Perhaps rising terrain all around?
Perhap no audio alarm and they just didn’t notice?
Perhaps they heard the engine running rough, and that took all their attention, and they mentally blocked out the alarm while trying to find somewhere to land?
I have to admit, if I’d simply a rough running enging and no idea why, I might be inclined to not touch anything until I’d some idea what was wrong (for fear of making it worse). Some power is usually better than no power.
Bush mentions two examples, both aircraft has EMS, yet both had their engines destroyed. He then goes on to say that installing EMS will save your engine. Strange conclusion.
Just having it doesn’t change anything. You have to pay some attention to the data and know what to look for. And you can hardly do that without good readouts.
Would there be some sort of audio alarm once a cylinder goes above a safe temperature? The article seems to suggest it.
An EDM700 has a flashing master warning light output (which I guess could drive a buzzer but that would be yet another thing to listen out for) which is normally programmed to go off if (from memory)
Usually the best immediate thing is to enrich the mixture, either full rich or (if at altitude i.e. above ~10000ft) enrich it “quite a bit” to bring down the temps. IMHO detonation is almost impossible to achieve on an NA engine above ~10000ft (75% power is reached at 8000ft).
You have to pay some attention to the data and know what to look for
You need to know the aircraft systems, yeah…… 
