That $80 harness tester I bought is gathering dust now

Picked up a cheap handheld continuity/fault tester off an auction site last fall for 80 bucks. Thought it would save me time chasing breaks in bundles on the CRJ200s we service. Turns out it only handles single wires under 30 feet, anything longer and it reads false opens. Spent two whole shifts rechecking my work with the old multimeter before I realized the gadget was lying. Boss said, "Tinker toys are for kids, not hangars" and honestly he wasn't wrong. Should have just put that money toward a decent used megohmmeter instead. Anyone else get burned by a budget test tool that sounds good on paper but falls apart on real bundles? What do you actually keep in your bag for fault isolation?

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noahhall6h ago

That "Tinker toys are for kids" line got me too, I bought a similar cheap tracer that couldn't handle the shielded bundles on the 767s we work. What actually saved me was learning to trust the old multimeter plus a long piece of wire I use as a known-good reference, boring but it never lies.