Can we talk about the time a bad ground wire grounded my whole afternoon

I was troubleshooting a Garmin GNS 430 in a Piper Archer at KOXR back in June and spent 3 hours chasing a ghost only to find it was a loose ground screw under the panel that the last guy cross-threaded, and the fix took 10 seconds with a tap and die set anyone has had a similar gotcha with those old 430s?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jason1mo agoMost Upvoted

Cross-threading is a pain but the 430 ground issue is usually the connector pins, not the screw itself. Check the D-sub pins for corrosion next time, that's the real ghost.

hannah_williams1mo ago

Yeah I had that exact same thing on a 430 in a Seminole a few years back. Ended up pulling the whole tray out thinking it was a bad pin but it was just a crusty ground screw hidden behind a wire bundle. I started putting a dab of anti-seize on those panel ground screws after that and it helped a ton.