Had a chat with a senior tech that shifted my view on test gear

I was working with a 30 year veteran last week named Mike, and he told me I was too quick to trust the automatic calibration on our new multimeters. He said the old Fluke 87s we had were more reliable because you could feel the leads and know when a connection was bad. That hit me because I've been chasing ghost readings for months on a Cessna 172, and it turned out one of my test leads had a hairline crack. He showed me how he wiggles every wire during a continuity check, and I realized I'd gotten lazy with the digital stuff. Does anyone else still use manual methods over auto features on certain jobs?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_charles25d ago

Wiggling leads saved me from rebuilding a good alternator once.

julia_patel25d ago

Ngl, "wiggling leads" sounds like a hack but honestly it's a real test that most people skip. You can have a perfect alternator but if the wires are corroded or loose at the connector, it'll act dead. What nobody mentions is that those leads can look fine on the outside but the copper inside can break from vibration over time, especially on older cars. I've seen cases where the insulation was intact but the wire was barely hanging on by a few strands. That kind of hidden damage won't show up unless you actually move the harness around while testing. So yeah, wiggling helps catch intermittent faults that a multimeter alone might miss.

torres.sage5d ago

My 85 F150 had a wire snap clean inside the insulation near the alternator plug. You ever find a broken wire that looked brand new on the outside? It took me three weekends to figure that one out.