Spent 4 hours chasing a wiring fault that turned out to be a 10-minute fix

I was working on a Cessna 172 last Tuesday and kept getting an intermittent nav light failure. Checked every connector, traced the whole harness, even swapped out the power supply module. After 4 hours of frustration I finally noticed a tiny bit of corrosion on a ground screw hidden behind a bracket. Cleaned it up with some emery cloth and everything worked perfect. Has anyone else wasted a whole afternoon on something that simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

gray_gibson11d ago

That ground screw corrosion has gotten me before too. I spent 3 hours on a Mooney once chasing a panel light that would flicker only during taxi. Turned out there was a nut loose on the back of the breaker panel that just needed a quarter turn with a wrench. The hidden stuff always takes the longest to find.

kevin_sullivan11d ago

Push back on that. I've had more electrical problems solved by a simple visual inspection than going down the rabbit hole of hidden connections first.