Warning: A single corroded pin in a D-sub connector cost me a whole Friday.

We were troubleshooting a persistent autopilot fault on a King Air 200, and after checking the obvious boxes, I found green fuzz on pin 17 of a cannon plug in the tail. That tiny spot of corrosion, hidden under the backshell, grounded the signal. Has anyone else had a 'simple' connector issue eat up a huge chunk of time?

3 comments

3 Comments

reeseperez15d ago

Tell me about it lol. I once lost a full morning to a random voltage drop on a sensor line. Traced the whole harness twice before I finally popped the connector open and found one pin was just barely not seated all the way. The locking clip looked fine but it was maybe a millimeter out. Now I physically wiggle and check every pin seat during reconnects, it's saved my butt so many times.

joseph_ellis8523d ago

Honestly, that sounds way too familiar. Tbh, I spent half a day once on a nav light fault that turned out to be a single bent pin in a multi-pin connector, just pushed it out of place during reassembly. My move now is to hit every connector with contact cleaner and a bright light before I even start real troubleshooting. It feels like a waste of time until it saves you a whole day.

val94923d ago

It's crazy how often the simple fix gets skipped for complex answers. We see it everywhere now, not just with wiring. People jump straight to changing whole systems when a basic check would solve it. That extra five minutes upfront feels slow, but it builds a habit that stops huge headaches later. It's basically about fighting the urge to overcomplicate things right from the start.