Senior guy told me to stop using twist-on connectors in the rack. He was wrong.

I was wiring up a Garmin G5000 retrofit on a King Air 200 about 8 months back. The senior tech, Dave, kept insisting I use terminal strip splices for everything instead of twist-on connectors like Wago lever nuts. Said twist-ons would vibrate loose in the panel and cause intermittent faults. I followed his advice for the first few radios. Man, it took twice as long and troubleshooting a bad ground later was a nightmare because I had to unscrew every terminal to trace it. After redoing one whole section with lever nuts, I had zero issues on the next flight test. Dave still gives me dirty looks when I pull them out. Any of you guys use Wagos in certified panels or is that just me?

2 comments

2 Comments

miles_jackson95d ago

Tell Dave his grandpa called and wants his terminal strips back. I had almost the exact same argument with our lead avionics guy on a G1000 install last year. He swore up and down that lever nuts would fail on the first hard landing and I'd be chasing ghosts for weeks. I swapped one junction box to Wagos as a test and guess what has zero issues after six months of short hops and hard landings? Meanwhile his hand-spliced terminal block still gives us a phantom static pop every third flight. Old habits die hard I guess.

adamcoleman5d ago

Saw a write-up from an A&P last month who tested Wagos under vibration. They actually held up better than terminal strips in his little experiment. Guess the old-timers don't want to admit plastic might be tougher than metal sometimes. Your lead guy probably still blames the Wagos for that phantom pop too.