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That time my shop foreman told me to stop chasing electrical gremlins with a test light
My foreman Dave said I was wasting time using a test light on a 2015 F-150 no-start and that I needed to grab a multimeter instead. I ignored him for two hours probing wires and getting nowhere, then finally used the multimeter and found a bad ground in 10 minutes. Has anyone else had to eat crow on a tool you swore was good enough?
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young.michael16d ago
...and there I was thinking I could diagnose a bad PCM relay on my 94 F-250 just by listening to it click. Spent a whole Saturday afternoon swapping relays around, cleaning contacts, even tapped it with a wrench a few times. Finally broke down and put a multimeter on the coil side and saw it was barely getting 9 volts. Turned out the fuse box had corrosion that was dropping voltage way below what the test light would show. I felt stupid but at least I learned that test lights lie to you on low voltage stuff. Ever since then I keep a multimeter in my glove box right next to my test light. Did you end up keeping that test light around for other jobs or did you toss it after that?
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samrodriguez16d ago
Haha dude the "tap it with a wrench" part hit home so hard. @young.michael I have definitely been that guy convincing myself a hard smack was going to fix the voltage drop. I still keep my test light around honestly, mostly just to make my multimeter feel superior when I use it to confirm the test light was wrong. It's like a decoy tool now, I let my buddy borrow it if he's working on something simple.
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harperp2416d ago
It's wild how many things in life are like that test light, you know? Makes you feel like you got it figured out until the multimeter shows up and proves you wrong.
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