POWER PROBE 3 TUTORIAL, WHY YOU DO NOT NEED TO UPGRADE

hey thanks checking out nuts and bolts with tone today we're going to talk about the power pro but before we do that why don't you go ahead and hit that like button because you're going to love this video hit the subscribe button hit that bell you get notified of all my future content which you know you're going to want to see because we just love to talk about tools and cars so today we're going to talk about the power probe 3. all right so i want to talk about this tool because this tool has a lot of uses and some uses uh i've found that a lot of people don't know that it that it has the ability of doing i want to talk about times that you should not use this tool and i want to give you a warning of what this tool can do all right so first and foremost we're going to go through the functions of this tool all right so right off the bat you have this lee this is how it comes just like this all right comes here got this nice little handy dandy little poker right it's got a nice little it's kind of sharp not super you know but it's got this lead here that looks like a multimeter yep all right so there is that end there all right so now while i have this open i want to show you a little tip if your power probe ever starts to feel like it's getting loose okay there's an allen inside of here that you have to tighten up okay that sometimes this will loosen up and you'll get a you'll get a bad connection and that's what it is the allen looses up loosens up in there but so anyways so here's the tip this is how you're going to use it most of the time this is how it sits in my box almost all the time all right so right off of the power probe we have we have the cord here and it comes off and we have this guy here all right now this guy is ground all right so this little alligator clip here is ground so if you're checking a window motor you know whatever checking whatever if you need to put ground to one side so you can check power on the other you got this guy wherever you're at all right and it's got this little this little tether that keeps them together and then you can pull it back and it allows you more room to to rotate the other end is two alligator clips that are clipped onto the battery now the first thing i'll talk to you about the power probe is something that i learned the very first time i got one i had a limo and i was up back i was at the back of the limo testing it this is a really long limo and i thought hey i'll just get a jumper box so i brought a jumper box over there i hooked up the power probe and i touched the power probe to the car and it did not work because the power probe only works when you're hooked up to the vehicle you're testing that is how it works so you got to make sure you hooked up to the battery and if you can't hook up to the battery there are options and here are some of the options so one option is this and this comes with your power probe all right so this is what the lead looks like okay and this just plugs and you disconnect the end that has the alligator clips and you plug this in and this goes into the cigarette lighter okay so maybe you're inside the car maybe whatever maybe you're at the back of the car and there's a cigarette lighter attachment and you know you just need to attach it to it all right the other cool thing about this is if you're not sure if the cigarette lighter is working if it has power right there's a nice little led on there to tell you if it's if it has power or not all right so another thing that i have and i'm not sure if this is just because this this must have come with my power pro because this is not a normal lead but this is a an an extension so i have a giant a really long extension so i can make my power probe twice as long and it just comes with the same the same plugs all right so now so we talked about how we can use what what uh how we can hook it up right and we talked about uh the different kinds of ends and how it has to hook up to vehicle power now what are some of the features that this thing can do well all right so okay so with the power probe one really good fat feature that you have with this is checking fuses that is actually probably the number one feature for this tool and what makes it so fantastic and let me show you how we're going to do that so you're going to have a screen here all right so this screen right here is blank right now okay and so what you're going to do is it has a volt meter built into it so what you're going to do is you're going to come across the fuse and you're going to touch one side of the fuse and as you can see that says 12.6 volts so now we're going to come to the other side of the fuse and that one says 12.6 volts that means that there is the voltage going through the fuse because remember a fuse has power on one side so that means that the fuse is good and it has the same now if it that's at 11.8 and this said 12.6 you know you have a problem or the most common problem of why you use the power probe is you check this side and it would be 12.6 with the red light beeping and then you go to this side and it would be zero and it would be ground and that would tell you that the fuse is blown and that's actually the most the the number one thing and so when you have a ground it's going to make a sound like this and when it shows power it's going to make a sound like that so that's how you can tell the difference between the sounds and also the light it shows you power and ground if you test a a voltage let's say you're testing a starter all right and you hook up the power probe and you just go to it and somebody hits the starter button and it applies power to the starter all right this thing might read 9.1 it might read 12.2 might read 11.7 alright the reason it does that is because this thing is not really really fast it has to remember it has to calculate what what it reads and then it has to display it right so there is a little bit of a delay so when you're checking a a starter right a starter only applies power for like not very long so this thing can easily read the wrong voltage it's kind of like checking a throttle position sensor or or a fuel sending unit right where as you move it the voltage varies well if you use a multimeter and you try to test that you're not going to see it because your multimeter is going to re is going to display the reading that it calculates at that time but it's wrong because it's not real time reading same thing with this now what you can do to fix that and now i do use this to test starters i actually use this all the time to test starters so what you do is oh before i forget right here on the side if you put using your power probe and it's not working check this this is a circuit breaker okay if too much of power gets applied or whatever it'll pop that circuit breaker to protect it all right so this button right here what does that do so we're gonna hold that okay and then now we're reading negative so that's going to show the lowest voltage now we're reading positive so now when you're on this okay so you can see it says positive 0.0 all right so now when you're when you're in this mode okay and you hit that starter button okay it is going to display the highest voltage that comes through the power pro so now you're actually going to see 12.2 and then you do it again you're going to see 12.1 you're going to do it again you're going to see 12.4 you can do it again you see 11.9 all really close to to each other because it's displaying what the highest reading is now that is how you use it for a fuel pump well fuel pumps are different that's how you use it for a starter all right fuel pumps are a little different because a fuel pump will will apply power for 30 seconds so you have 30 seconds and it's going to apply 12 volts so you're going to have 12.1 you're going to have 12.6 whatever voltage you're going to have it's going to stay there for 30 seconds unless you have another problem now if you're testing a fuel pump and your voltage is changing right or you're seeing 10.1 or something like that well then that's when you want to get out your multimeter all right now this is not for circuit test like computer controlled circuit testing now you can use this to check for an egr control solenoid getting 12 volts right you can do that you know it's it's if you're just if you're just actuating it you know you're in the scanner and you're like egr control solenoid on and you want to see 12 volts okay cool so now you know that 12 volts was applied to the solenoid so that works but you don't want to use this when you're testing computers when you're testing anything that the voltages can be minute it can be an on off signal it can be a duty cycle it can be a varying voltage right you can use this checking a blower motor right do you have power boom you have power you have power on on stage three you have power on stage two do you have power on stage one you have power on all those okay great now you know your resistor is sending the power to the blower motor you have a bad blower motor right and it's applying power and your blower motor is not working the other thing you can do is you can disconnect the connector and you can come over with your handy alligator clip and use this to go to one side of the blower motor use this to go to the other put power to it blower motor turns on you know the blower motor works in some flow charts the actual directions will tell you a window motor they'll tell you to disconnect their connector and apply 12 volts and ground to the connector does the window operate if it operates your motor works right that's the same thing this does except for you don't have a hot wire hanging around so that's actually a really good function of this tool here um i i like that function you can also turn off the buzzer so if i'm hooked up to a power circuit right now like let's say i have this hooked up to power and i'm messing around and i'm doing something it's just over there just you can actually hit the button and turn the microphone off so it won't the speaker will turn off so it won't display that until you're ready so that that is that that is how that works and that is why it's important now before we talk about some of the different ways you can connect with this i want to tell you i want to give you a warning so there is a saying in the automotive industry about letting the smoke out of the box right so maybe you've heard of it maybe you haven't okay when i first got a power probe i don't know 15 16 years ago first thing my boss said when i walked in the door was don't let the smoke out of the box and i didn't really i think we talked about it in school but i was kind of unsure what he was talking about and he's like that guy over there put power to the wrong circuit and pop the computer all right so i've been kind of lucky i have actually powered the wrong circuit a couple times on accident tracer was wrong color or whatever and uh i got lucky i popped a fuse um one time was doing like a early 90s honda i was testing i was testing the egr system for uh for an emissions failure and uh and i applied power to the egr um to see if the emissions would drop and i was on the wrong circuit and the car died and i thought that i blew up the computer and thankfully i found a blown fuse under the dash but uh so be very very careful letting the smoke out of the box before you go and apply power and ground with this man really go and double check your wiring diagram double check your the tracer on your wire count the pins on the connector make sure that you are doing what you and you know what you're applying power and ground to you have to really understand what you're doing before you go messing with this now the easiest ways to do it is a starter a fuel pump a blower motor super easy super simple those are what i recommend using the power and ground for disconnecting connectors and applying power and ground if you're not sure um so now the other thing so i want to talk about there's one thing i want to talk about the end before i want to talk about that i want to show you some attachments and the the reason that i like the one of the reasons i like the power pro so we have the regular attachment right it's just a normal little little pic little little thing there all right so when you're testing a bmw the starter is under the intake and it's way down there and you can't get to it and it's a pain and if you don't work on bmws all the time you don't know what fuse box to go to and what connector to plug into to check for the signal going to the starter right so you have a no start hit the button nothing happens turn the key nothing happens what do you do what's the first step well every car is different but a bmw you're going to go to the starter you go straight to the starter so the first thing you're going to do is you're going to go to the starter and you'll be like oh crap it's way under the intake how am i gonna get there all right well i'm gonna tell you how you're gonna get there you're gonna get there with this guy here now this is called the penetrator all right so this is a very similar to the other the other lead okay and this is i believe this is by power probe this is by power probe this is power probe right there you can't see it all right so this has an extension on here so it's one one connector and there plugs in and it plugs into the power probe alright so you can see how long that is all right it's about 12 inches long and now the other one's not as sharp this one is really sharp so this actually works really good for bmws because it barely reaches if you push really hard you can push right through the insulation on the solenoid signal wire and have somebody bump the key you see 12 volts it needs intake gaskets starter bolts and a new starter intake gaskets starter bolts why do you need those intake comes off starter bolts have to be replaced anyways so this is actually really good for bmws i have used this a lot for bmws okay so some other things that i like to use it for is sometimes you know sometimes you're not going to be able to stick this in somewhere and hold it right and a good connection means everything so if you're putting connections together that don't belong together then you're going to lose voltage it's not going to be correct right and you're going to mess up your leads so back in the day we used to have to shove uh one one connection into this end to extend leads out or to plug them in well since your power probe has this and your multimeter has this all your leads well they work with the power probe so hey let's do this we're going to plug this guy in here right perfect connection and what do we have what we have here is a tool that i really like to use and this is called a bed of nails open it up and right here is a little round it's probably about a quarter inch around and it's a whole bunch of little tiny nails little tiny needles and and then this is a stopper right there and so it pushes the wires you put the wire there it bites in gives it connection doesn't break the wiring doesn't break the the uh it doesn't break the wiring that's the key is you're not breaking the wiring you don't want to shove things through the wiring because then you break it you lose connection and uh so then the other thing that you can do well since it works with the multimeter and another i just want to show you another little as we go here another little set of leads i have plug that one in there and then boom what do you have here you have a back probe pin we're going to back probe this right into a connector and we're going to be able to see what's going on we're going to be able to hang it on there you know sometimes we have to connect some leads together we're going to hang it on there you know whether it be a starter whether it be a blower motor you know sometimes you need to plug it in and then you need to bring this with you so you can look at it right so that is how it connects and those are some really cool things to use it for now the very last thing i want to talk about is now there is a lot of power probes right so there was power pro one power probe two power probe three i think i had one and two now i have three actually this is like the third or fourth uh number three i've owned um so now i mean so now that there's then there's a uh i believe there's one called a maestro which is just like this but it's like skinnier and the face here kind of sits up more at an angle and then there's a there's a power probe hook there's a there's a power probe four there's a you know there's all these different power probes so should you upgrade should you buy a power probe 3 should you upgrade to a 4 to a hook to all these different ones and my answer is no i'm not upgrading to a different power probe the only way i would upgrade to a different power probe is if that power probe costs the same amount as this one because this one does everything i need it to do what all those new power probes do i urge you you don't really want to use them for what they're used for what they what they say is they can check fuel pulse width they can check you know all these different types of ignition all these different types of testing that they can do right you don't want to do that with a power probe you want to do that with a multimeter you want to do that with a scope those are things that you want to do those tests with i would never check injector on time with anything other than a scope i wouldn't use a multimeter so why would you use a power pro right and the screen is this big so you don't really want to use that for this now the only benefit to the newer power probes that i really like and i wish the three had it is the ability to latch a command meaning i could go and put ground and a hold ground now there's a power probe hook and one shop i was at we actually got that one and uh and it was great because when you're testing evap uh you have a bmw and you need to go in the trunk and you need to apply power you need to apply ground to uh to a vent solenoid so you can close the vent so you can smoke test the evap system well you're not going to sit there and hold ground and it's a pain to run aground and so the power probe is nice because you could command it to stay on ground or stay on power so that's one feature that i really like and that i would upgrade to a four if i needed to buy a new power probe and like i said it was about the same price because i'm pretty sure that newer ones can do that i really like that feature but in my opinion and i've been doing this for a long time i do a lot of electrical testing and a lot of diagnostics i use this power probe 3 all the time and i personally won't be upgrading so my recommendation is stick with this it's a good price you can get these all the time and you can get them in all kinds of cool colors maybe you could be doing no one will see you because it's camouflage well anyways uh thanks for checking out nuts and bolts with tone i hope you liked my video about the power probe i hope it was informative i really tried to explain it to you and and teach you how to use it and teach you the functions and the features that it has it has other features and other functions i don't use them i don't really know how they work because i don't do anything else with the power probe those things that i've showed you are the things that i use it for and it works just fine for those and i don't need it for anything else so again thanks for checking me out and uh we'll see you next time hit the like button hit the subscribe button hit the bell get notified i'll see you next time

Channel: Nuts & Bolts with Tone

Views: 46,140

Keywords: powerprobe, powerprobe3, voltage, ohms, amperage, electrical, fusetester, automotive, testing, dvom

Id: MXpvV32Rsp8

Length: 20min 16sec (1216 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 02 2021