Showerthought: I used to think contact cleaner was for lazy guys until I watched a 12 year old harness come back to life | Avionics Technicians

Drew Thomas · 2026-10-11T04:45:04.065479+00:00

For years I thought spraying a connector was just a shortcut for guys who did not want to repin anything, and I would spend an hour with a pin tool instead. Last Tuesday a coworker handed me a cannon plug off a King Air that had been sitting in a Texas hangar since 2011, and the pins were dull and gray. He hit it with cleaner, worked the plug a few times, and the resistance on our meter dropped from 40 ohms to under 1 in about two minutes. I watched that same plug pass a functional check right after, no repinning at all. I still repin when the pin is pitted, but I was wrong to treat the spray as a hack. How do you guys decide when cleaning is enough and when it is time to cut and crimp?

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Showerthought: I used to think contact cleaner was for lazy guys until I watched a 12 year old harness come back to life | Avionics Technicians - The Community Guide