violar35•1mo agoProlific Poster

Took me 20 years to realize I was testing connectors wrong

I used to just wiggle wires and call it good on the ramp in Seattle. After a 737 had an intermittent fault last spring, I started doing proper pull tests and tension measurements on every connector. Has anyone else found a simple habit change that cut down their troubleshooting time?

3 comments

3 Comments

sean_cooper5829d ago

Mary, I totally get what you're saying about pull tests feeling like overkill. That's exactly what I thought too until I had a similar wake up call. I used to just give wires a quick yank and if nothing fell off I figured we were good. But after spending three days tracking down an intermittent issue that turned out to be a connector that looked fine but had a hairline crack in the housing, I changed my tune. Now I do the full pull test and check every pin for proper tension every time. It adds maybe 10 minutes but I can't remember the last time I had to redo a connector job because something came loose. The wiggle test might show a problem faster but it misses the ones that are right on the edge of failing.

marywilson29d ago

Pull tests feel like overkill when a simple wiggle usually shows the problem faster.

joel_jones29d ago

Totally agree with Sean here lol. I actually watched a video from one of the big aerospace contractors where they showed a connector that passed a wiggle test but failed a pull test by a mile. The video was about how even brand new connectors can have weak pin retention from the factory. That blew my mind. I started doing pull tests on everything after that, and I swear I've found two bad pins in new harnesses just in the past month. The wiggle test catches the obvious stuff, sure, but it misses the ones that are barely holding on. Those are the headaches that come back to bite you later.