As some of you folks may know, some of my businesses require all kinds of test equipment.
I have learned the hard way, that sometimes less is more.
I have a Fluke model 120, I think, 200mhz Scopemeter.
It stays in its case a lot.
By the time I get it out, unpack the test leads, turn it on and discover the batteries are dead. Pull out the power supply, find a socket, plug it in hook it all up, set it on what I need to measure,
I have already measured the battery, found out it was dead, gotten the jumper cables, jumped the truck off, checked the charging system and found out the Alt. is bad with my cheap multimeter.
But, when you need the big guns, nothing else will do.
Right now, if I go somewhere that I do not know what I am going to need, this is what I usually have with me, and why.
http://www.bkprecision.com/products...-rms-dmm-with-protective-rubberized-case.html
This is my go-to meter right now. Its fast, accurate, tough, NOT auto-ranging.
I really do not like auto-ranging for my go-to meter.
Too many times I find myself waiting until the meter makes up its mind.
This meter will give me a reading quick, and has all of the features you would find on a more expensive meter.
http://www.shopextech.com/p7171/extech_381285.php
I am sorry they do not make this meter any more. It was a great bridge between DMMs and Scopemeters.
Very large digits, plus a 5 mhz scope function.
Not fast enough for RF work, but great for showing me some 60cycle hum on what was supposed to be a clean DC line.
Or a leaking capacitor or corrosion letting some DC bias leak through on what was supposed to be pure AC.
It is auto-ranging, but its also the no.2 meter that I grab for.
Number 3, of course, is the Fluke Scopemeter. It does a lot of riding around, but it gets pulled out enough times to make it worth putting in the car.
Number 4, is not a meter at all.
Its a Fluke 1000 amp AC/DC clamp-on current probe.
http://us.fluke.com/Fluke/usen/Accessories/Current-Clamps/i1010.htm?PID=56281
It works with the other meters, but when you hook it to the Fluke scopemeter, you can get it to do all kinds of tricks.
The Scopemeter, records.
So, you can store a waveform and play it back.
Combined with the current probe, you can do things like a no-tools compression check on an engine.
That trick has been around for at least 20 years, but I am amazed how many times I use it and experienced mechanics, guys who keep up on stuff, have never heard of it.
The last time, was about 4 weeks ago. My mechanic was cussing a diesel motor he had just gotten through putting in a Ford truck.
His father-in-law's no less.
It was a junkyard special, and had a warranty, but he did not want to have to wait while he got another one, and he especially did not want to have to change it.
It ran, but had a dead cylinder. He was hoping for a bad injector, when I drove up to talk to him about my car.
When he told me what he was having trouble with, I got out my Flukes.
He killed the fuel, I clamped the probe around the cable to the starter, set the scope on record and spun the engine over.
When we played it back, the bad news was obvious.
Every time a piston comes up to compression, you see a big current spike. If its a gas engine, you can trigger off the no. 1 cylinder and even tell which cylinder is which.
You cannot tell what the compression is, although if you do enough of them you can make an educated guess.
But what it does do is show if they are even and if you have a bad cylinder.
In this case it did not matter.
It was plain to see a series of current spikes, each one equal distance from the next, and all the same height, indicating that the compression in each cylinder was about the same, and then a tiny bump where there should have been a big spike.
One cylinder had almost no compression.
Of course, those are just my carry meters. I also have a couple of Simpsons, a Radio Shak one, and a few older ones I don't remember the brand of..
