PSA: How a 10-year-old connector turned my whole day upside down

I was working on a Cessna 172 at the shop near Burbank last Friday and kept getting intermittent readings on the nav receiver. After 2 hours of chasing my tail, I pulled an old D-sub connector off a repair from 2013 and the pins were all corroded inside, looked like a dog had chewed on them. Replaced it with a new one and the system worked perfect first try. Has anyone else had a crusty old connector waste a whole afternoon like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

dylan2651mo ago

Wait, did you check if the D-sub was a genuine mil-spec or just some cheap aftermarket clone? Those knockoff ones corrode way faster even in a dry hangar.

anna_coleman2d ago

That garbage is the worst, been there myself. @ellis.nina knows the pain of dealing with that green crust all over the pins.

ellis.nina1mo ago

Oh dude, didn't you hear about the time I grabbed a batch of those cheap D-subs from some random eBay seller? Total disaster. They looked fine at first but within like 3 months they started flaking green gunk all over the pins. Had to rip out every single connector and redo it with proper mil-spec ones from a trusted supplier. The knockoffs just don't seal right, even if they're sitting in a perfectly dry hangar all day. I swear they use some crappy zinc alloy that just hates the air. Never again, always go genuine or at least a reputable brand.