On Aug 16, 9:47*am, "jamesgangnc" wrote:
"Wayne.B" wrote in message

news
wrote:

Pfffttt... nuttin' beats an oscilloscope, if I had my druthers...

True but a little unwieldy to carry around on the boat.

Actually I've not had a reason to use mine on a boat but I have an old
tektronix 305 portable that has rechargable batteries plus terminals to
accept dc external power anywhere from 9v to 32v. *And it's fairly small for
a crt scope. *All solid state except for the crt and fairly resistant to
bumps and bangs. *Tektronix always was my preference for scopes.

Nothing is better for testing the input and output of transistors and
the cpu of an engine... I used to be able to take a quick look at a
spark plug patterns and tell you rich, lean, open, dead, etc. in a
matter of seconds. Some of the guys would have me poke my leads around
under the hood before they started working on certain runability
problems... Saved them a lot of time.. The other thing I could really
read well was the tail pipe gas tester.. Between those two inputs, I
could really point someone in the right direction...

"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:02:20 -0400, Short Wave Sportfishing
wrote:

On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:29:43 -0400, "Eisboch" wrote:


"Richard Casady" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:54:53 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:54:11 GMT, (Richard
Casady) wrote:

How about putting an Ohm meter across the terminals. Tells you if it
is either open or shorted.

That's OK if you disconnect the wiring first, otherwise you will
crispy fry your ohmmeter.

You can plug my Fluke into a power outlet with it set to ohms without
any damage.

Casady


Fluke makes good meters. I still manage to blow them up though.
My favorite is still my Simpson 260 that somehow was mistakenly packed in
my
personal stuff when I left the Navy.
Still works fine, 31 years later.

Got two of them.

Best VOM EVAH...

Oh, I might add I also had a Fluke - past tense.

Didn't like it - sold it.

Gimme good old analog meters anyday.

Years ago while I was still in college and fixing mainframes to pay for
college, the factory engineers came out to a Beta site we had in San
Francisco area. Simpson meter is connected across the legs of a 208 3 phase
line to see how much voltage was really there. They had the meter on
milliamp scale and sounded like a 38 going off in the room. Magic smoke
curling up from the meter. except for the milliamp scale, meter worked
fine. Had blown apart the shunt resister was all. Good meter. My last
simpson died a sad death. Battery leaked and the acid wiped out most of the
internals.

"Richard Casady" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:32:03 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:24:42 GMT, (Richard
Casady) wrote:

You can plug my Fluke into a power outlet with it set to ohms without
any damage.

Casady

Interesting, didn't know that.

Most of us don't own Flukes however. Traditional analog VOMs will let
the magic smoke out of the wires if you do that.

I don't particularly like the shock resistance of analog meters. If
you have been using an analog meter all your life and are used to it
you don't really need the fancy new ones.

Casady

Was in a 99 cent store last year, and bought a nice little VOM for a buck.
Even has the old plug the transister in holes for beta's etc. Small, fits
in the boat toolbag nicely.

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:58:21 -0700, "Calif Bill"
wrote:

Years ago while I was still in college and fixing mainframes to pay for
college, the factory engineers came out to a Beta site we had in San
Francisco area. Simpson meter is connected across the legs of a 208 3 phase
line to see how much voltage was really there. They had the meter on
milliamp scale and sounded like a 38 going off in the room. Magic smoke
curling up from the meter. except for the milliamp scale, meter worked
fine. Had blown apart the shunt resister was all. Good meter. My last
simpson died a sad death. Battery leaked and the acid wiped out most of the
internals.

The Fluke has a 1 amp fuse for the milliamp scale, and a 10 amp one
for the amp scale. Actually it is the lead car type batteries that
have the acid. Dry cells have zinc chloride which is not an acid, but
which is highly corrosive, as you noticed. Alkaline cells do not have
acid, obviously. They have potassium hydroxide, and while they are not
particularly prone to leakage, the stuff is also highly corrosive.

Casady