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Finally fixed a faulty harness without pulling my hair out
At the hangar in DFW last Thursday, I had a Cessna 172 with intermittent avionics dropout. Turned out a ground pin in the connector was barely seated, not broken. Triple checked it with my DMM and fixed it in 15 minutes after chasing ghosts for 2 hours. Anyone else have a connector pin that looked fine but was the root of all evil?
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veraj539d ago
Blame those sneaky little pins every time, man.
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the_lucas9d ago
Man, I had a buddy who chased a similar ghost on a Piper Archer for almost a whole day. He was about to replace the whole avionics stack when @veraj53 told him to check the pins on the power connector again. Turned out one ground pin had a hairline crack right at the base under the insulation, totally invisible unless you bent it at the exact wrong angle. He finally found it with a jeweler's loupe and a continuity test while wiggling each pin individually. Fixed it in five minutes with a new pin and a proper crimp tool. Drove him absolutely nuts because everything seated fine and the meter showed continuity until that one specific vibration hit.
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