That story about the connector with play is the kind of thing that eats at you later. What got me was how the leak test looked clean until he physically touched it, which means the numbers were lying the whole time. Did Ray ever say how he figured out which connectors to push on, or did he just do all of them no matter what? I keep wondering if there's a pattern to the ones that go bad, like cheap fittings, certain years, or spots where heat and vibration hit hardest. Because if it's random, then the wiggle is the only real test you've got. What else did he make you redo that first week?

Reminds me of when my uncle tried to develop a roll he found in a shoebox from 1987. He used some old powder developer that had turned brown like instant coffee and the negs came out so clear you could read a newspaper through them. He swore it was the camera until my cousin pointed out the roll had never even been shot. Thing sat in a closet for 30 years and he still blamed the Minolta. Funny thing is the edge markings would have told him everything, same as your case. No numbers means the dev was toast before it ever touched your film.