Hawk
Well-known member
Can Tire has 75% off multimeters. Useful to check bike voltage output, batteries and more. Sale starts Aug 31 to Sept 6. Ride safe.
They're crap, not accurate but better than nothing.
They're crap, not accurate but better than nothing.
I have one of those "Canadian Tire" meters in my garage. As OP said, they are pretty much only good for to check battery voltage and such. A couple of days ago I wanted to check impedance of the freshly repaired speakers (which is supposed to be around 4 Ohms) and CT meter happily reported 0 Ohms on both speakers. Had to go and grab my trusty Fluke.
I used one to check my battery voltage and got 18 volts. My Fluke said 12 as did a couple of other meters I had kicking around. Using that ratio a battery could be at 8 volts and you would think there was nothing wrong with the battery because the meter said it was at full charge. At least check it to see how far it's off before you do something dumb.
Why are you replying to my post? LOL. I have a Fluke for pretty much everything being an electrical engineer, and obviously I know how far my CT meter is off from 'normal'.
What's crap? The ones I linked too have decent voltage accuracy. They are nice because they have a continuity mode which many cheap ones don't have.
Again, this is good for simple work, checking voltage levels, wiring checks, a lot of regular work on a motorcycle electrical system. The current measurement is so low that it's not very useful, though. 0.8% accuracy is what it claims for DC Voltage and I've had three and all have had good accuracy.
Other than my regular one, I have a couple of these for just leaving in the garage or putting in a pack if I need it. They work well for the very basics.
http://dx.com/p/auto-range-digital-multimeter-9636
I used one to check my battery voltage and got 18 volts. My Fluke said 12 as did a couple of other meters I had kicking around. Using that ratio a battery could be at 8 volts and you would think there was nothing wrong with the battery because the meter said it was at full charge. At least check it to see how far it's off before you do something dumb.
As an electrician I won't use any crappy tire stuff. Fluke meters or Greenlee for me