One old A&P told me to trust the smell test, saved me 4 hours of troubleshooting

Back in March at the hangar in Tulsa, I was chasing an intermittent pressurization fault on a 737 for two days. A retired A&P walked by, sniffed the outflow valve area, and said 'that's burned servo oil, stop testing and pull the actuator.' Ngl, I thought he was messing with me, but he was right, the actuator had a cracked seal dumping fluid into the controller. That conversation stuck with me because he didn't use any fancy diagnostic tool, just 40 years of pattern recognition. Has anyone else had a senior mechanic point out something obvious that you completely overlooked?

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john_johnson7512d ago

Had a similar thing back in 2011 with a Cessna 340 that kept tripping the master warning on climbout. Young me was checking every switch and breaker, the whole nine yards. Old timer from the next hangar over just sat in the seat, listened for a second, and said the gear indicator sounds lazy. Turned out the squat switch on the nose gear was barely hanging on, a little corrosion and a loose bracket. He didn't even open a panel, just heard the click of the microswitch not being crisp. Always trust the guy who's heard a hundred of these things before he even takes a wrench to it.