I finally stopped trusting the wire color and started ringing out every pin on the 737, here's what I found
Twelve years ago at a hangar in Tulsa I learned from an old timer to never trust a wire just because it's the color the manual says it should be. Last week on a 737 I found a white wire where a blue one should have been, and it traced back to a repair done in 2011 that nobody logged. Since then I ring out every single pin with a meter before I sign anything off, even if the bundle looks factory fresh. It adds about 20 minutes to a job but it saved me from a miswire that would have grounded the plane for a week. Any of you guys run into swapped wires from old repairs that nobody documented?
Twenty minutes per job is a lot when you've got three planes on the floor and a boss watching the clock, so I go by area instead of every pin. Repairs and splices get the meter, but a factory bundle that's never been opened usually gets a quick visual and move on.