the_alice•1mo agoMost Upvoted

Senior tech ripped my wire routing apart on a King Air 90 last month

I spent 3 hours dressing a harness on that nose job and he pointed at one loose tie wrap and said 'this is how you get chafing failures'. He made me undo 18 feet of lacing and start over with a different spiral pattern near the firewall. Have any of you guys had a supervisor tear out your work and make you stick to their exact method?

2 comments

2 Comments

gavin_knight391mo ago

Had a lead inspector on a Cessna 210 make me redo a whole bundle because I didn't leave a service loop at a bulkhead penetration. He said that tight spot would crack the conduit in cold weather and sure enough, that's the exact spot they always fail. Now I leave a little extra slack and a double wrap of chafe tape anywhere near sheet metal edges. Sometimes the old heads have seen it fail enough times to know the tricks.

luna_craig581mo ago

@gavin_knight39 I get where you're coming from but sometimes the old way isn't the only way. That service loop trick works great on light singles but on a King Air 90 you're fighting for every inch of space in that nose compartment. I had a supervisor show me a different method where you spiral the bundle tight to the bulkhead and use a split piece of teflon tubing over the chafe tape instead of doubling it. He said the extra slack just gives you something to snag on during maintenance. Took me a few tries to get the spacing right but I haven't seen any cracking since and it's way easier to trace wires for troubleshooting.