A 30-year vet told me to stop trusting my multimeter

Dave from the hanger next door caught me chasing a ghost signal on a King Air. He said most guys miss intermittent faults because they rely on the meter instead of a scope and a wiggle test. Has anyone else had a senior tech change how you approach a problem like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

susan_ward2mo ago

Stop trusting your multimeter" is bold, but I get it. A wiggle test catches loose connections that a meter just can't see. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather spend ten minutes shaking wires than chasing ghosts for an hour.

theas9426d ago

Oh wow, that really caught me off guard, @paul117! Three times in one week? That's wild. I can practically feel the frustration in your post. I've been in that same boat where the meter reads perfect but you just know something's off. It's like the wires are gaslighting you. The wiggle test has saved me more times than I can count, especially on older cars where the harnesses get brittle. I'd take a good shake over staring at a meter any day, it just feels more honest somehow.

paul1172mo ago

Three times last week I found intermittent shorts by just twisting a harness back and forth while the meter was showing dead stable readings. @susan_ward, you're absolutely right about trusting that wiggle test over a multimeter when things get weird. Multimeters are great for static checks but they lie to you when a connection is barely hanging on by a thread. I've learned the hard way that chasing voltage drops for an hour only to find a loose pin makes you feel like a real fool. So yeah, give me ten minutes of shaking wires any day over that headache.