Found a cracked solder joint on a Garmin GNS 430 using a freeze spray trick

I was chasing an intermittent power loss on a Cessna 172 at our shop in Wichita for almost 2 weeks. After replacing connectors and chasing wires, I hit the backplane board with some freeze spray and watched the unit glitch out immediately. Turned out to be a hairline crack on pin 13 of the main processor. Has anyone else used freeze spray to find those intermittent faults?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo_coleman287d ago

Freeze spray is one of those tricks that works way better than it should, kind of like how a good whack on the side of a TV used to fix the picture tube back in the day. It's wild how something so simple can pinpoint a hairline crack that a multimeter would never catch on its own. Reminds me of how sometimes the most random everyday hacks, like tapping on a flickering lightbulb or blowing on a Nintendo cartridge, can solve problems that seem impossible to diagnose.

adams.troy7d ago

Ain't that the truth though? Speaking of weird fixes, I had this buddy once who swore his truck had a ghost in the electrical system. It would stall out randomly on hot days, but never when a mechanic had a look at it. He finally tried the freeze spray trick on the wiring harness near the battery, and sure enough, the truck died the second he hit a certain spot. Turned out to be a tiny fray in a wire that only acted up when everything was warm and expanded. He fixed it with some electrical tape and never had the problem again. Makes you wonder how many "haunted" cars are just a little piece of tape away from running fine.