I finally stopped fighting the torque stripe on wire bundles at DFW

We had a gate return last month on a 757 because a clamp came loose and chafed a bundle. The torque stripe on the fastener looked fine from the aisle, but once we pulled the panel you could see it had cracked and moved about an eighth of a turn. Now I check stripes on anything within 12 inches of a moving surface or a control cable. Takes ten extra seconds per clamp but that gate return probably cost the airline more than my week. Do you guys re-stripe after every retorque or just leave it?

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bencampbell8d ago

Four hundred hours of retorque documentation across my last two line checks and I've never once seen a cracked stripe that actually caught a real fault before the clamp failed anyway. All that extra time adds up fast and you're just training your eye to look at paint instead of the actual hardware.