I can't claim that as my own. I read that in a trade magazine last year. It was a top ten list of Aircraft Technician axioms. It's one of those things that jumps out at you as you read it and makes you laugh out loud. Mainly because that statement is 100% correct. Anyone that has maintained aircraft for a living would agree.
Heres an example:
You've got 30 minutes left on your shift on a Friday afternoon before a nice long three day holiday weekend. Your aircraft is scheduled to depart in a few minutes as some coworkers are finishing up their work. Being the good guy you are you decide to adjust a loose engine cowl latch that bugs you everytime you see it. Now the latch still works fine but, it could be tighter so as not to vibrate and wear as much. So you grab a couple of tools and off you go. After opening the doors and securing them, you set out to give the old latch a couple of turns. You take out your trusty $40 Snap-on wrench and go to give the adjusting nut a turn. Except that the nut is siezed and you slip off of it as you strip it and drop the wrench down into the lower cowl. After you wipe away the blood from your knuckles and finish up with cursing, you set about retrieving your wrench with all sorts of other tools/potential fod. Twenty minutes later you hit pay dirt with a pair of mechanical fingers. Being the wise and experienced aircraft technician that you are, you decide to cut your losses and live to fight another day. So you unlock and close the cowl doors and with a couple of clicks from the latches you secure them shut. Except that what was once a pesky loose latch has now become a grounding broken latch. You and your very happy crew now spend the next several hours removing the cowl and replacing the broken parts.
And that my friends is why...If you screw with something long enough...it will break!
BTW...I'll leave it to yourselves to decide if that story was real or not
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Darren...Humble Aircraft Technician!