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Rant: Connector pin pulled right out of the backshell on a CRJ200 yesterday
Was doing a routine pitot static check on this old bird at the hangar in Dayton and went to unplug the static line connector. The locking ring turned easy but when I pulled, the pin came clean out of the backshell, wire and all. Turns out somebody had crimped it years ago without a proper strain relief and the insulation had cracked to dust. Took me about 3 hours to chase the pin part number and rebuild the whole plug with new contacts and boot material. Has anyone else found random ancient crimps just failing like that on legacy airframes? I'm starting to think we ought to borescope every connector we touch on these older ships.
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margaretramirez6d ago
And that's exactly why I stopped trusting the old drawings on those CRJs. I read a maintenance bulletin last year about the same issue on the Dash 8 fleet, where the original crimp dies were worn out and nobody changed them for a decade. The insulation gets brittle from all the heat cycles in the wheel well, but you never see it until the wire moves wrong. Three hours is actually pretty good for that repair, I've seen guys burn a whole shift on those backshell rebuilds because the pin insertion tool doesn't seat right. You're right about borescoping every connector, but honestly we should just replace the whole static block harness on anything over 15 years old. The cost of the new plug beats the ground time when it fails during a preflight.
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