Oh man, my buddy had a shop try that on his old truck! He told them absolutely not and found a real mechanic.

Honestly calebhayes, "packed so tight it felt like pulling a cork" is the perfect way to describe that kind of mess. Tbh I'm just picturing a squirrel thinking shredded plastic bags are the height of luxury nesting material. Ngl that melted plastic mix sounds like the worst kind of surprise, like the squirrel was trying to invent a new type of awful glue. You definitely won the weird nest contents award with that one.

That needle swing is great for seeing a trend, but it's just too slow for most modern stuff. Digital meters with a good bar graph show the same real time change without the guesswork. Trying to read a precise voltage off an analog scale in a dark laundry room is a pain. My Fluke's min/max hold catches those quick dips the needle would just blur past. The old Simpsons are cool, but they just can't keep up on a lot of boards now.