Spent 4 hours chasing a ground fault that was just a corroded pin on a cannon plug

Was working on a King Air 200 last Tuesday up in Spokane. Got a weird intermittent NAV issue. Pulled every box, checked every breaker, ran my multimeter over every wire I could reach. Finally found it on the last connector I checked. One single pin in a 37 pin cannon plug had green crust all over it. Cleaned it and everything worked. Could have been a 20 minute fix if I checked there first. Anyone else find themselves staring at schematics forever before just looking at the obvious stuff?

2 comments

2 Comments

chen.jade23d ago

Started doing a visual inspection first no matter what on every job now. Even on complex stuff like Collins Pro Line, skipping the simple stuff just wastes time. After that cannon plug mess I bought a cheap magnifying headset too, helps catch the green crust before I dive into the wiring diagrams. Saves me hours every month now.

lewis.mila23d ago

Oh come on, @chen.jade, is it really that serious? I mean yeah, visual inspection is fine but spending money on a magnifying headset just for some green crust sounds a bit overkill to me. Most of the time you can just wipe it off and move on, right? I get that cannon plugs can be a pain but I feel like people make too big a deal out of it. The wiring diagrams are there for a reason, just use them and you'll be fine without all the extra gear. Honestly seems like you're adding steps that don't need to be there.