That MD-88 smoke detector false alarm changed my whole wiring approach

We were doing a C check at MRO Orlando and the MD-88 cabin smoke detector kept tripping after every power cycle, turned out a previous tech had pinched the ground wire between the panel and the frame using the wrong length terminal. I spent 4 hours chasing it with the test set before I started pulling panels and found the crushed insulation, so now I check wire routing before trusting any fault code. Has anyone else had a false alarm like that burn a whole day, and what do you do to catch those hidden shorts faster?

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elizabeth_gonzalez22d ago

Used to trust fault codes first, but now I always pull the panel and check the wiring before touching the tester.