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hi all,
I’ve been working with my Power Probe I for more than 12 years now and am now working with the european distributor for Power Probe equipment. If someone is really afraid to accidentally put 12V to a circuit that is not supposed to take that voltage, there’s a simple solution to it : your can short-circuit your Power Probe III (put the ground lead to the probe tip and put 12V to the tip, automatic fuse will pop out) before you start diagnosing your wiring. Now you can no longer put current or ground to the tip, but all other functions of the PPIII can be used. You can measure continuity, see voltage drops/peaks, measure peak-2-peak voltages etc.
One great function to observe is the combination of the polarity indicator and the display ! The older versions of the power probe (1 and 2) only informed you of the circuit’s polarity with a red/green LED. The Power Probe III does this with a green “-” or a red “+”. What’s the difference now ? Well, if you’re touching a ground circuit and your green “-” doesn’t lit up (only the display shows 0.0), than you have an immediate indication that you have a resistance (i.e. internal wire corrosion, etc) to the ground. The same happens when you’re touching a positive circuit : if the display only shows the voltage and the red “+” doesn’t light up, this means you have a resistance (voltage drop) in that positive circuit. Considering that almost 80% of electrical/wiring problems with modern cars are caused by bad ground connections, I’d say this is a fine feature of the Power Probe III.
OK, the Power Probe is not as simple as a simple test light…but if you learn to work with it, you’ll almost forget about your multi-meter 🙂
Regards
Werner Klaassen
Coplan Europe
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