Flywheel
The flywheel is located on one end of the crankshaft and serves three purposes. First, through its inertia, it reduces vibration by smoothing out the power stroke as each cylinder fires. Second, it is the mounting surface used to bolt the engine up to its load. Third, on some diesels, the flywheel has gear teeth around its perimeter that allow the starting motors to engage and crank the diesel.
Blower
The diesel engine's blower is part of the air intake system and serves to compress the incoming fresh air for delivery to the cylinders for combustion. The location of the blower is shown on Figure above. The blower can be part of either a turbocharged or supercharged air intake system. Additional information on these two types of blowers is provided later in this module.
