Hot take on that fancy harness tester I bought for $400

Last month I grabbed a brand new harness tester from a vendor at the MRO show in Atlanta. Thing failed on the third connector I tested, threw a false open circuit reading. I spent two days chasing a non-existent break in a wing harness before I ran a continuity check with my old Fluke 87. Anyone else see these new digital tools cause more problems than they solve?

2 comments

2 Comments

christopher90326d ago

Same thing happened to me with a digital torque wrench a few years back. Spent a whole shift torquing landing gear bolts on a 737, turns out the wrench was reading ten foot-pounds low. Old school beam torque wrench I had in the bottom of my box caught it before I did any real damage. It's like these companies rush to put a screen and bluetooth on everything without making sure the actual measurement part works right. Battery dies in the middle of a job and you're stuck with a brick that cost more than your first car.

elizabethhart26d ago

Keep chasing the battery issue down the rabbit hole too - had a digital caliper die mid-inspection and had to eyeball a flap gap because I couldn't find spare batteries in the hangar. Just makes you wonder why we keep paying premium prices for problems we didn't have before.