Found a corroded pin that explained 3 months of intermittent radio problems

I was tracing a bad com radio on a King Air last Tuesday and finally pulled the connector shell at the back of the tray. One of the pins had green crust all around the base, looked like it had been sweating salt water for a year. Cleared it with a fiberglass pen and hit it with DeoxIT, radio worked perfect after that. Anyone else ever found corrosion hiding in a spot you'd never think to check first?

2 comments

2 Comments

shah.olivia15d ago

Did you check the backshell where the drain holes sometimes get clogged? I've seen that exact green crust on King Air trays where moisture sits right under the connector. A little corrosion there can make the radio act flaky for months while everything else tests fine. Always worth pulling the shell and looking at the pin base itself. That fiberglass pen trick works good, but I've had to replace a few pins that were too far gone.

juliaa2514d ago

Honestly I think people overcomplicate this stuff. If the radio is working fine on the bench and passes all the checks, chasing green crust on a backshell is probably a waste of time. I've left connectors with way worse corrosion than that in service for years and never had a single issue. Those drain holes are designed to let moisture out anyway, so if you keep the aircraft flying regularly it usually dries out on its own. Nine times out of ten the problem is something else entirely and people just blame the backshell because it looks scary.