Leakage and increased friction are common faults in hydraulic cylinders that can have serious consequences if they are not detected at early stage. In this paper, the design of a fault detector for a nonlinear hydraulic mechanical system is presented. By considering the system in steady state, two residual signals are generated and analysed with a composite hypothesis test which accommodates for unknown parameters. The resulting detector is able to detect abrupt changes in leakage or friction given the noisy pressure and position measurements. Test rig measurements validate the properties of residuals and high fidelity simulation and experimental results demonstrate the performance and feasibility of the proposed method.