Spent 2 hours tracking a hydraulic leak that was just a loose fitting

I was doing a preflight on a 737 at PDX last Tuesday and saw fluid dripping from the wheel well, so I pulled out the flashlight and started tracing lines like an idiot. Turns out it was just a B-nut on a return line that needed maybe a quarter turn with a wrench, but I wasted all that time chasing ghosts. Has anyone else had a simple fix turn into a marathon search like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

noahmartin1mo ago

First off, how much time do you normally budget for a hydraulic leak trace before you start questioning your life choices? I'm asking because I usually give it an hour and then start tightening everything I can reach, just to see if it stops.

parker1831mo ago

Man I tell you what, I gave up on "hours" for leak traces a long time ago. My personal record was six hours crawling around a 40 year old Cat backhoe trying to find a slow weep on the boom circuit. I finally gave up and just started retorquing every JIC fitting I could get a wrench on, and somehow that fixed it. So now my whole strategy is about 20 minutes of actually looking, then I just start snugging things down and hoping for a miracle. Does that make me a bad mechanic or just a practical one?

grantw321mo ago

Six hours on a Cat backhoe? You crawled around for six hours before giving up? I would have started weeping right along with that boom circuit after about the first 45 minutes in that position.