Had a connector fail on a CRJ900 last week and it changed how I clean terminals

Was working a panel on a CRJ900 at MRO Tech in Oklahoma City. Had a D-sub that tested fine on the bench but gave intermittent readings on the bird. Pulled it apart and found corrosion hiding under the crimp. My usual routine was just a quick wipe with contact cleaner. Now I'm using a fiberglass brush and DeoxIT on every single pin before I seat it. Shop foreman saw me doing it and said "that's how we did it in the Navy." Anyone else run into hidden corrosion in crimped connections?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_richard1d ago

Great tip @blair_butler47. Guess my bench skills are as clean as my terminal maintenance.

blair_butler471d ago

The Navy guys always seem to know the weird tricks. I talked to an old A&P who used to work on P-3s and he said they'd see corrosion inside terminals that looked clean on the outside all the time. Salt air gets into everything. He swore by using a small dental pick to gently scrape inside the crimp barrel before inserting the wire. I started doing that plus a drop of LPS-1 before crimping and it cut down on my rework by a lot. The fiberglass brush is good for the pin surface but that hidden stuff underneath is what gets you later.