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TIL those cheap multimeters from Harbor Freight can ruin your day
Ngl I grabbed one of those free multimeters with a coupon a while back and it read a dead capacitor as fully charged. Ended up swapping a good compressor on a fridge in Tulsa because I trusted the reading instead of my gut. Lost about 3 hours and had to eat the cost of the replacement part. Has anyone else had a cheap meter give you bad readings?
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william_carter1mo ago
Yeah I had the exact same thing happen with a dead 9V battery while working on a washing machine relay board in a basement in Phoenix. That meter showed 8.9 volts on a battery that was completely dead when I checked it with my Fluke later. What worked for me was buying a cheap Klein meter from Home Depot for like 30 bucks and testing it against a known good battery every time before I trust it. I also keep a second cheap meter around just to double check readings if something feels off. Those free meters are fine for checking if a wire is live but don't trust them for anything that costs you money or time. Save yourself the headache and spend the extra 20 bucks on something that won't lie to you.
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lisak261mo ago
Yeah I learned that lesson the hard way too. Now I always test my meter on a known good source first before I trust any reading on something that matters.
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victorb1715d ago
My buddy Tom had a meter that showed 12.4 volts on a car battery that was completely shot, ended up chasing electrical gremlins for three hours before he figured it out. He finally grabbed his old Fluke from the truck and that battery was actually sitting at like 10 volts under load, way too low to start anything. Now he keeps that cheap meter in the drawer for backup only and uses the Fluke for everything real.
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