Tried a generic breakout box for troubleshooting and instantly regretted it

I was working on a CRJ200 last Tuesday and needed to trace a pin issue on the autopilot servo. My coworker swore by his $30 no-name box from eBay, so I borrowed it instead of grabbing my own from the truck. Hooked it up and half the pin labels were wrong, spent 45 minutes chasing a problem that didn't exist. Swapped to my trusted DMC breakout tool and found the real short in under 10 minutes. Anyone else had bad luck with cheap pin testing gear? I'm not making that mistake again.

2 comments

2 Comments

maxp689d ago

The neighbor kid borrowed my Fluke meter once to test an old dryer plug. He was convinced the neutral was bad but his $15 multimeter from Harbor Freight kept bouncing all over the place. I walked over with mine and had it pinned down in two seconds flat. Some tools you just don't cheap out on if you actually need to trust the reading.

casey9437d ago

Hold on, man, you're acting like the kid was about to burn the house down. A bouncy reading on a cheap meter doesn't mean the neutral is good, it usually just means the probe tips are trash or the leads are loose. I've fixed plenty of stuff with a $20 Cen-Tech, you just gotta jiggle the wires and know what you're doing. Honestly, half the time the expensive meter is just giving you the confidence to trust a bad reading faster. As long as you aren't doing lab work or life safety stuff, a little noise on the display isn't the end of the world.