Instrument spiders as conductors

[flightlogic]

When you mount those old round instruments you use a brass nut that has little legs. We always called them spiders. When one of them falls behind the panel, and you forget to remind yourself to go chase it down. (on your back... legs out the slider, flashlight in mouth... readers on your nose... you get the picture)
Eventually Murphy will place that little brass spider across the hot buss and ground. It then becomes a fusible link. When it happened to me this week, it sizzled, crackled, made smoke and generally got my heart rate up significantly. When I "misplaced" it last Saturday.... I meant to look for it. Leaking brakes, nose shimmy, dead compressor, backwards brake pucks... all lead to distractions and a senior moment on my part. Well, the fusible link melted most of the spider and I eventually found it above the breakers. Could have been worse. So, a little holiday reminder to all.... if you lose one.... FIND it. Cheers, Nick

[Walt]

I always use a single loop of lacing cord to tie them in place, much easier than hunting them down later

PS: they are called instrument nuts

[flightlogic]

I like the lacing cord idea. I have a roll of white.... seems like waxed dental floss. Is the black that looks like heavy thread a better bet???

[Walt]

Originally Posted by flightlogic

I like the lacing cord idea. I have a roll of white.... seems like waxed dental floss. Is the black that looks like heavy thread a better bet???

Either one will work... but the black looks better

[RV8Squaz]

No smoke, but how about a 1/8" long single strand of 22 gage wire bridging two pins of a 25-pin D-sub connector to cause days of frustrating troubleshooting?! That happened to me a while ago trying to locate the source of an intermittent erroneous reading on my engine monitor that only occurred during flight. Went through typical troubleshooting sequence. You can imagine my surprise when I found the source of my malady! Remove connector, blow, reseat connector, could not duplicate.

Jerry Esquenazi
RV-8 N84JE

[Neal@F14]

PS: they are called instrument nuts

Also known colloquially as "Grasshopper Nuts" (NAS487)
http://www.chiefaircraft.com/aircraf...e/nas-487.html

...and when you drop them while working on a Cherokee instrument panel, they *always* find their way to the electrical switch terminals along the bottom of the panel.