TIL having the shop pull the old wiring harness and give me the whole run on a bench is worth the $400

Joseph Wilson · 2026-10-19T08:45:05.531962+00:00

Had to rewire a nav/com rack in a King Air and I was going to do it in the airframe, one wire at a time, just working around the panel. The shop lead told me to pull the whole harness and build it on the bench first, so I did, and it took about 6 hours spread over two days in the shop in Wichita instead of the 10 plus hours I had guessed for doing it in place. Pulling it meant tagging every connector and taking a bunch of photos before anything moved, which is a pain, but on the bench I could actually see the pinout and catch a swapped pair before it ever went back in the plane. With the harness out I could run the continuity checks with no cramped hands and no dropped screws into the bilge. Has anyone else switched to bench building for rack work, and how are you labeling the runs so you do not lose track of them?

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TIL having the shop pull the old wiring harness and give me the whole run on a bench is worth the $400 | Avionics Technicians - Thought Shares