Your right on the edge with cylinder 5
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Captain Phillips
markatherstone67 — 10 years ago(September 19, 2015 08:22 AM)
When Hanks rings the engineer he starts saying "Bring her up too ." I'm guessing all the 122, 125, 129 etc are the engine revs since he throttles the engine up a notch after each phone call. But why did he need to ask the engineer if all was good before doing so? He says "Cancel the limits" (rev limiter?) and then throttles it to the max. So why did he need to ask the engineer for each "notch" he accelerated if the engine could cope at max revs anyway? Never understood that bit! Also, how can only one cylinder be close to its limits since they're all connected?
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BQQ — 10 years ago(October 03, 2015 05:34 PM)
He didn't want to push the engine unless it was absolutely necessary, as each extra notch carries a greater degree of risk.
The last question, each component of the engine (which is not just the pistons), while connected, is more or less a separate unit of varying condition, and has separate diagnostics. They were all approaching their safe limits.
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KingCobra686 — 9 years ago(August 31, 2016 05:22 PM)
Don't forget that if he pushes it too much, he will blow part of the engine and either come to a stop or suffer greatly reduced speed. Both of those would pretty much guarantee the ship getting hijacked. Ideally he wants to go as fast as possible to try and lose the pirates without blowing an engine, and the only way to do that is to know exactly where those limits are.
Having the engineer downstairs monitoring gives him the data to know where those limits are. Its more complicated than just looking at one gauge and making sure the needle is good since there are a lot of factors involved.
Also, how can only one cylinder be close to its limits since they're all connected?
Lots of reasons. An ideal engine would have every single part at the exact nominal dimensions that they are designed to be, but that is neither economically feasible or even possible. Every manufactured part has tolerance ranges of what they are allowed to fall within to be acceptable. Cylinder five might be less ideal than the other cylinders, which makes it the first one likely to fail.
Or maybe they replace the cylinders on schedules and cylinder five is currently the oldest and closest to needing replacement. Maybe something happened that caused slight damage to that cylinder, but not enough to be noticed or require immediate replacement.