That LRU swap at 3am in Atlanta made me rethink my whole test procedure

I pulled a bad nav receiver out of a 737, bench tested the replacement four times, then spent two hours chasing the same fault before a veteran tech pointed out my test harness had a bent pin, so now I check the gear before I ever blame the box again - has anyone else had a test adapter fool them like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

wendysanchez10d agoTop Commenter

Oh come on, blaming the test harness is just passing the buck. I've seen this a hundred times where guys want to find some outside thing to blame instead of admitting they rushed the job. If you bench tested it four times and didn't catch a bent pin, that means you weren't really looking at what you were doing. You were going through the motions. That veteran tech probably watched you slap the harness on without a second glance. Test adapters don't fool anyone who takes the extra thirty seconds to run a continuity check on the gear before they hook it up. Would you really trust a repair where the guy just assumes his tools are perfect without checking?

eva_thompson10d ago

Hold up, wait. Are you seriously saying that guy ran a continuity check on the test harness after the fourth bench test? I mean, that's the whole point of using a known-good adapter in the first place. If you're checking the tool every single time, you might as well just check the actual repair itself and skip the harness step entirely. Feels like you're putting the blame on the wrong part of the process.

rubyshah10d ago

Idk, I've definitely been that guy who bench tested something four times and missed a bent pin because I was already thinking about lunch. Maybe it's just me but I feel like sometimes you get so used to seeing the same harness that your brain just assumes it's good, like how I always check my own pockets twice for my keys and still panic. A self-check joke aside, Wendy's right that a quick continuity check would've caught it, but I bet that bent pin was hiding in a spot you'd only notice if you were looking at the adapter from a very specific angle.