Vent: Wasted $120 on a cheap brake tester for controller boards

I bought this no-name brake tester off eBay for $120 thinking I was being smart with money. Used it on a MCE controller board in an office building downtown and it gave me false readings for two hours. Tore apart the whole system looking for a short that wasn't there. Finally borrowed a buddy's Fluke and found the issue in five minutes. Anyone else get burned by cheap test gear that just costs you more time in the end?

3 comments

3 Comments

dakota_nelson432mo ago

Got burned almost exactly the same way with a knockoff clamp meter last spring. Spent an entire Saturday chasing a phantom ground fault on a rooftop unit before my foreman handed me his Klein and I found it in ten minutes flat. Cheap tools are just expensive lessons in disguise man.

gonzalez.reese1mo ago

$12 Harbor Freight special almost had me cussing at a wall in a customer's house last month. I was trying to diagnose why a brand new dishwasher was tripping the breaker every cycle, and that junk meter kept telling me the line was dead. Turns out it was showing a false reading because the battery was barely hanging on. Had to drive twenty minutes back to my shop for my Fluke, and the whole time I'm thinking about that $12 that cost me two hours of billable time. You're dead right, cheap tools just teach you the hard way why you buy good ones.

bennett.noah2mo ago

Dude, got absolutely wrecked by a no-name multimeter last year. Thought I was saving cash but it just made me chase ghosts for three hours on a control panel. Ngl, that $120 "bargain" cost me way more in lost time and frustration.