Can we talk about the obsession with swapping connector pins instead of just cleaning them

I keep seeing guys on here immediately reach for their pin removal tools on the bench at Hartsfield-Jackson when a display goes haywire... half the time it's just corrosion on the pins or a loose backshell. I've fixed three intermittent faults this month on CRJ-900s with nothing but contact cleaner and a tiny brush, saved hours of re-termination work. Does anybody else actually try cleaning first or am I the only one who thinks this is the obvious move?

3 comments

3 Comments

felix8241mo ago

Had a guy on a DC-10 once pull out a full pin extraction kit for an intermittent glareshield display. Took him three hours to swap everything out. I walked over, hit the pins with DeoxIT, worked the connector back and forth twice, and the thing came right up. He just stood there holding his extraction tool like it was a magic wand or something. Never even acknowledged the cleaner existed.

sean_johnson168d ago

I mean, I get where you're coming from @faithwalker, but I kinda see the other guy's side too. On older airframes like the DC-10, those glareshield connectors can get so freakin' corroded that cleaning feels like a waste of time when you've already got a full extraction kit laid out. I've been in his shoes before where I was so sure it was a pin issue from years of vibration that I didn't even stop to think about plain old oxidation. Sometimes you just get tunnel vision on the hard fix and miss the easy one.

faithwalker1mo agoMost Upvoted

Whoa, that's a wild story. Wonder if the guy was too focused on swapping parts that he forgot the basics like cleaning the connector first?