Had to pick between a new wire tracer and fixing the old one

Last week, our shop's old wire tracer started giving a weak signal on a 737's main harness. The boss gave me a choice: order a new unit for about $800, or let me take a full day to try and fix the old one. I picked the fix, thinking I could save the budget and maybe learn something. Spent six hours opening it up, cleaning every contact, and re-soldering a cracked joint on the main board. It worked, but that was a whole shift gone on one tool. Now I'm not sure if saving the money was worth the time we lost on other jobs. Has anyone else had to make a call like that, where fixing old gear ate up more hours than you planned?

3 comments

3 Comments

wendy8201d ago

Feel that, been there with an old multimeter. Time always feels free until you're down a whole day.

morgan_king361d ago

Multimeters don't usually eat a whole day. More like an hour if the battery's dead or the leads are shot. A full day sounds like a deeper wiring issue, not the tool itself.

gavin3651d ago

My old Fluke 77 from the 90s cost me a whole Saturday once. The display started showing random numbers and I spent hours checking my circuit before I realized the meter itself was giving false readings. It wasn't the leads or the battery, the actual chip inside was failing. A tool you trust giving bad data is the worst kind of time sink. You end up chasing problems that don't exist.