Found a wiring discrepancy in a 737 that had been there for 8 years

I was doing a routine harness check on a 737-800 last Wednesday. Found a pin in the D-sub connector that was pushed back just enough to make intermittent contact. The weird part? I checked the logbook and that connector hadn't been touched since the original build in 2017. The aircraft had over 12,000 flight cycles with that bad pin just sitting there. No fault codes, no reported issues, nothing. I showed my lead and he said he'd seen stuff like that before on other frames. It got me thinking about how many other little gremlins are hiding in these harnesses that just never cause a big enough problem. Anyone else come across factory defects that went unnoticed for years?

2 comments

2 Comments

betty14415d ago

Hate to hear that but I'm not surprised at all. @scott.grace your buddy's Cessna story is wild, shows how these things can just sit there invisible. I had a buddy who found a screw loose in a fuel control unit on a King Air that had been cruising for 15 years without a hiccup. It's scary how many little glitches are just waiting to become big problems.

scott.grace15d ago

Man, my buddy found a loose ground wire in a Cessna that had been flyin' since '09 with zero issues.