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Vent: spent 3 hours chasing a fuel gauge gremlin before my lead asked one question about the bonding strap
Last Tuesday I was buried in a fuel quantity issue on a King Air 200 in the hangar at Wiley Post, and I mean buried. I had the maintenance manual open, a wiring diagram taped to the wing, and I was ready to start pulling the tank unit and ohm-ing out the whole sender circuit. I checked resistance at the connector twice, swapped in a known good gauge from another bird, and still got the same erratic needle bounce when I tapped the panel. My lead walked over, watched me for maybe 30 seconds, and asked if I had checked the bonding strap between the tank and the airframe. I had not. Turned out the strap had a crusty connection that was adding just enough resistance to throw everything off, and I mean everything. Ten minutes with a scotch brite pad and some new hardware and the gauge read dead on. Three hours of my life gone because I went straight to the complicated answer and never checked the simple ground path first. Now I keep a little rule taped inside my box that says bond first, chase second. Anybody else got a go-to first thing they check on fuel indication before they start ripping panels off?
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