Took me 6 hours to find a bad ground on a Garmin G5 install

I was troubleshooting a Garmin G5 that kept losing heading data. Checked wiring diagrams, swapped connectors, even reloaded the software. Turns out a ground screw I installed was biting into a painted spot on the airframe. Six hours of my Saturday gone because I didn't use a star washer. Anyone else spend way too long on something that simple?

2 comments

2 Comments

viola_garcia568d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, does that ever sound familiar? I spent a whole afternoon chasing a glitch in my turn coordinator once, only to find a similar issue with a ground wire hitting a painted part of the panel. It's amazing how a little thing like paint can stop all the electrons from flowing where they need to go. You think you've been careful, you check everything, but that one tiny detail just slips through. A star washer would have saved you six hours, but we all learn these lessons the hard way in this hobby. At least now you know for next time, and the G5 is working like it should.

the_robin7d ago

6 hours is brutal but honestly I've got one worse from a few years back. I spent almost 8 hours one Sunday chasing a weird intermittent failure in my autopilot where it would just drop out randomly. @viola_garcia56 I totally get what you mean about paint being invisible to electrons, but this one was even dumber. I pulled every connector, re-pinned half the harness, and even called the manufacturer before I realized the issue was a single stray strand of copper wire bridging two pins inside a D-sub connector that I couldn't see without a magnifying glass. It was so tiny that my multimeter didn't even catch it until I did a really thorough continuity check pin to pin. Makes me feel a little better knowing I'm not the only one getting wrecked by tiny stupid stuff like bad grounds or paint.