Anyone ever use one of these? I want to buy one so I can test for short circuits, open circuits, the battery, alternator and whatever else I can use it for. Is a basic one 15 range multimeter from radioshack good enough or do I need something with more range?

 

thats reaLLY all you need bro. if you know a lil about electrical theyre easy to use too.

 

That should be fine. I'm no electrician but I don't think you need an expensive one unless you are a serious electrical person.

 

Mostly you get what you pay for. I have a $20 radioshak small DMM that closes into a little case. The auto-range responds slowly, & the display isn't too big. It can't measure very big current & it's not super accurate. But if I lay it on the garage floor & step on it, I'm not gonna cry about destroying a $200 meter.

I've also got a $220 Fluke 179. The display on the Fluke has a bargraph so I can watch stuff that's erratically changing, and even the digital display is WAY faster than the RS. It's no substitute for an oscilloscope, but the little meter would only display meaningless confusion. It's also bigger, it's not something I'm gonna carry around everywhere. Plus, I bet it would survive being dropped on the floor. Maybe not if I stepped on it...

I like the Fluke way better. But if I didn't have the $$$ to buy something like that, there's very few things I couldn't measure with the RS. You don't need the RANGE on a car, but the accuracy is nice.

$35 for this one...
http://mcm.newark.com/NewarkWebComme...KU=72-2050&N=0

$300 for this...
http://mcm.newark.com/NewarkWebComme...KU=105-555&N=0

 

If you are looking on the more affordable side, Harbor Freight (and Harborfreight.com) always has a decent selection of cheapie digital multimeters available for sale.

The only feature that I wish my cheapie multimeter had would be a "beep notification" for continuity testing. That way, you don't have to look up from whatever circuit board or car part you are testing to find out if there is a short or not. Is that feature worth buying another multimeter for? Nah.

-g

 

So what exactly does the range do?

 

Range is just how high or low it's capable of measuring. My fluke 179 can measure up to 1000 volts, maybe the RS can only measure up to 200 volts. There's nothing on the car above 15 volts anyway.

My fluke is supposed to be accurate to +/-0.09% + 2 counts. Which is like 0.014 volts. A cheap meter might be off by 1/4 volt or more. For troubleshooting cars, you normally don't need that much accuracy.

My fluke can measure DC current up to 10 amps. A cheap meter maybe only 200 milliamps which is 0.2 amps. So if I'm trying to check for something that's draining the battery overnite, maybe I'll blow a fuse on the cheap meter but I can measure it with the good one.

Autoranging is when you simply set it to measure volts, you don't have to set any particular range. My RS meter takes about 2 seconds for the display do decide how to set itself, & then it shows the voltage. Less than 1/4 second for my Fluke. When you put the probes across a battery, 2 seconds seems like a long time.

But $200 is a lot of money... I had an in-between meter that was maybe $60 & I had that for more than 15 years. It was fine until it quit working. That was my excuse to 'upgrade'. I think if I got one of those $10 Autozone meters I'd get tired of it pretty quick.

It's also kinda like using a K-mart socket wrench. It takes off bolts just like the snap-on wrench, but you don't expect it to last forever.

 

Thanks alot for your thorough response. I appreciate it.