AKSuperDually wrote:
One of my customer's aircraft needed an instrument sent in for repair. What should have been a 5 minute job took me 1.5 hours because the avionics technician that installed the instrument didn't include enough room in the wire harness to fold down the instrument panel. The manufacturer designed it to fold aft with the removal of two quick pins, allowing for easy access to behind the panel for removal/upgrade of the panel. The avionics tech made the wire bundle so short...you had to remove the seats and interior, crawl under the panel, snake two hands up through 10" of wire bundles, hoses & instruments....to disconnect the back of the harness on the back of the instrument prior to being able to then fold the panel and remove the instrument. Insanity, but job security. Don't be that guy! lol.
I hate that sort of thing. You did well to take only 1.5 hours. The classic problem is while reaching for the component you need to disconnect you accidentally break something else and the job gets even longer. I've been teaching Sally vehicle maintenance on her Suzuki Samurai offroad toy, and one of the big lessons she has learned is that what looks like a simple job, often turns into a nightmare for reasons like you experienced: item A should just come right off, but item B is in the way; item B is rusted on and breaks when you try to remove it; replacing item B entirely means removing items C and D to get access to the back of it and then item B needs bleeding as well :M. It is the sort of thing maintenance manuals gloss over - "Step 1) remove dashboard" :S.
Steve.
