Vent: That fancy multimeter I swore by was giving me bad readings for months

I picked up a Fluke 87V about 8 years ago and thought it could do no wrong. Last week I was chasing a ghost in a Garmin G1000 wiring issue on a Cessna 172 and my buddy handed me his old Klein meter to double check. Turns out my Fluke was off by 0.3 volts on DC readings from a loose internal fuse holder I never cleaned. Has anyone else had a trusted tool fail them like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

jenny_coleman14d ago

Oh man, that loose fuse holder thing is a nightmare! I had a similar issue with my old Agilent meter where the probe jack got slightly corroded inside. It would work fine for resistance checks but give me these tiny voltage offsets that drove me crazy troubleshooting a PLC panel. Ended up swapping probes one at a time with a buddy's meter before I figured out my red probe jack was the culprit. That was a solid week of chasing my tail until I just happened to wiggle the probe and saw the reading jump.

simons2814d ago

Funny you mention that, my buddy had a similar thing happen with his old Fluke 77. Turned out the battery was just barely low enough to mess with readings but the meter wouldn't show the low battery symbol. Took us forever to figure out why his car stereo install kept blowing fuses.