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[f350ca]

Been wanting one of those for a long time. Who needs digital

[Highpower]

Nice Stan. One of my favorites.

Analog meters still do some things better than digital displays.

[Hawkeye]

I used to have one of those. One scale on the ohmmeter needed an odd battery - 30V, I think. Actually found one at a battery store. Lost it in my house fire.

[arvidj]

(12-27-2020, 10:48 PM)Highpower Wrote: Analog meters still do some things better than digital displays.

I noticed that many years ago while debugging some issues with the ECU on the MR2. I was looking for a rather long "pulse" ... several tenths of a second ... and the digital meters would not show anything as it did not have time to stabilize at 12v before returning to ground.

Radio Shack was in the process of closing all it's stores but the one a few miles away was still open and had a "less than $10" analog meter on hand. Got it and was able to see the needle swing up (no idea how far, but it did swing!!!) and then return to zero so the required information obtained and I could move further down the Toyota trouble shooting guide.

Beats having to drag the oscilloscope out to the garage.

The digital I have now has an "analog" bar on the LCD but I am not sure how "fast" the bar is. Does it take as long as the digital display to calculate what the value is and then determine how many of the bars should be colored in? Haven't tried it so I don't know.

Arvid

[Highpower]

"Back in the day" long before the MR2 came along, I remember having to pull trouble codes using an analog meter. If there was a problem in the check engine light circuit and it couldn't 'blink' out a code we could sometimes go directly to the ECU and count meter swings instead. While the bar graph display on my Fluke meters definitely update much faster (40/sec) than the digital display (4/sec) it is still not as smooth and easy to see as the response from an analog meter movement.

It's much easier to spot a glitch in a throttle position sensor (potentiometer) for example while watching the smooth swing of the needle vs trying to keep up with blinking bar graph segments that are hunting back and forth.

The Simpson 260 went through several different combinations of batteries over the years. So did Triplett meters. D cells, AA cells, 9V, 15V, 30V etc.
They stopped production of the now outdated higher voltage cells here in the US quite some time ago, but luckily the Chinese market started supplying (close enough) replacements for them several years ago after they became scarce here.
I have collected a few 260's in different series with different features. I blame my late uncle Fred for introducing them to me when I was still in grade school. Loved them ever since.

[Highpower]

It's a sad day when the Germans start letting quality control go to hell. I sprung for a set of torque screwdrivers a while ago and this is what I got. It would have been nice if the torque setting tool actually fit in the case properly like the rest of the driver handles do considering what this set sells for. Evidently they changed the design of the setting tool handle to a fat stubby type, but didn't update the cutout in the case for it. The tool they show on the web site has a longer, thinner handle that matches the cutout in the case.  

   

[Dr Stan]

Wow.

[Highpower]

I found some NOS "open box" versions of these tools that an ebay seller has listed. From the looks of his pictures it appears Wiha has changed the handles on these at least 4 times. Yet when I contacted Wiha USA they said they have never run across this issue with these tool sets and basically - too bad, so sad... and I haven't heard from them since. Real nice.

   

[EdK]

Yea, Wiha stuff ain't cheap.

Ed

[Highpower]

Well the cost just went up another $16.00  

Yeah, not cheap but they work SO much better than the POS I got from Wheeler Engineering years ago. Still ticks me off though. It's like buying a new car and then finding out afterward that it doesn't come with a spare tire.