Hit 500 cycles on a Garmin GNS 430 and the shop owner said swap the tray, I said clean the pins first

Casey Wells · 2026-09-25T17:10:04.158756+00:00

Last Thursday I was doing a ramp check on a 172 at a small field outside of Wichita and the GNS 430 started dropping GPS signal every few minutes. I pulled the unit, and the tray pins had that green fuzz all over them. My lead told me to just swap the whole tray out, said it was not worth the time. But I have seen this before on other 430s, and nine times out of ten it is just corrosion from moisture getting in behind the panel. I grabbed some contact cleaner and a fiberglass brush, took me about 40 minutes, and the signal came back solid. We flew it for two hours after that and it never dropped once. Now I am wondering if I was wrong to go against the lead on a busy day, even though it worked. Should I have just done the swap like he said, or was cleaning the pins the right call? I want to hear what other avionics folks do when the boss says replace and you think clean is enough.

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Hit 500 cycles on a Garmin GNS 430 and the shop owner said swap the tray, I said clean the pins first | Aircraft Mechanics - Opinions Matter