Wish I caught this earlier - bad crimp almost took down a nav unit

Last month at a private hangar in Scottsdale I had a Garmin GTN 750 go dark mid-diagnostic. Turned out a D-sub pin had a cold crimp from the factory install. Spent 4 hours chasing a ghost before I just re-did all the pins. Has anyone else seen bad crimps on brand new harnesses?

2 comments

2 Comments

angela89013d agoMost Upvoted

I wish I caught this earlier" - yeah, I gotta push back on that one. Here's the thing, cold crimps on brand new harnesses are actually pretty rare if you ask me. More often than not it's just operator error from whoever did the install, not a factory defect. Like, I've seen guys rush through the crimping process with cheap tools and blame the harness instead of admitting they messed up. Plus spending 4 hours on a full re-do seems like overkill when you could have just tested the specific pin and moved on.

casey_torres6013d ago

Not trying to be rude, but what specific kind of tester or tool do you think would have caught that cold crimp the fastest without pulling the whole harness apart? I have had times where a simple voltage test looked fine but the pin still had a hidden issue that only showed up under load. Just curious if you have a go-to method for that kind of quick diagnosis.