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Just realized a 5 minute visual inspection saved me 4 hours of chasing a leak

I had a Citation that kept showing a slow pressure drop in the hydraulic system. Spent almost 3 hours pulling panels and testing lines with the mityvac. Gave up for the day. Came back the next morning, did a quick walk around and saw a tiny puddle under the left main gear wheel well. Turned out to be a loose return line fitting I could have spotted in 5 minutes. Anyone else find themselves overthinking and skipping the obvious stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

laura_black3126d ago

lol that's painfully relatable. I had a King Air once where we spent two days chasing an intermittent avionics ground fault. Pulled every panel in the nose, reseated connectors, the whole nine yards. Turned out the previous guy had left a single loose screw under the floor that was rattling against a wire bundle when the plane hit bumps. A quick visual under the floor with a flashlight would have caught it in 30 seconds instead of 16 hours of labor.

terryh2017d ago

Sixteen hours? I would have been tearing my hair out after the first four. A single screw under the floor, that's just insult to injury. At least now you can spot a loose screw from twenty feet away, I bet.

valw3626d ago

Man that King Air story is a perfect example of how the little stuff will bite you. It's like your brain gets so set on finding some big complicated issue that you forget to check the simple things first. I've done that same dance more times than I want to admit. You start pulling tools and thinking about fancy diagnostic procedures when a slow walk around with your eyes open would do the trick. The worst part is afterwards you feel like a total rookie for missing something so obvious. But hey at least you learn to trust your eyeballs a little more next time.