Review on OEMTOOLS 24338 100A Battery Tester by Joseph Neal

As for "OEMTOOLS 24338 100A Battery Tester & Voltmeter", I think the tools should be: Easy to use. TO VERIFY! Just. CHECK!Robust.CHECK!Precise. TO VERIFY! acceptable price. TO VERIFY! Five points. all five "passed", hence the five stars. Form of a simple resistance heating coil (Part #1) calibrated to read cold cranking current at 12 VDC on a large analog meter (Part #2) after turning it on with a snap switch (Part #3) for 10 seconds ( Count in your head or use your watch/phone). That's all. Three simple parts. At this point, it may seem that while the device is very cheap, you're still overpaying for how easy it is with so few parts. Well, it probably costs less than three bucks to build, but everyone needs to eat right? Out of the box I tested it on two proven and fully charged marine batteries: a 1000CCA starter battery and a 675CCA deep cycle home battery. Both were tested at or slightly above specs, which most likely means my 1-10 Mississippi score may have been a little quicker than 10 true seconds. Both caused the heating coil to glow cherry red inside, which is to be expected and is not dangerous. Note that the back of the device (like the rest of the device) is metal and can get quite hot after repeated test runs, or if you have multiple batteries to test or just want to see them red hot! It is best to let the device and its coil cool down for a few minutes before performing series tests. Allowing the coil to cool between runs will also give you more accuracy, since running a second test with the coil already hot will skew the ampere test results. "Up to 1000 CCA", its resistance coil is probably too large for small 12V batteries such as those used in lawn tractors etc, so test results on these small CCA batteries may not be very accurate. You must also test with a fully charged battery, this is not a "cheat" thought, just a requirement to get accurate results. In general. a very handy, functional device at a very reasonable price that should last forever if not abused. hp Please wear safety goggles or better yet a full face shield when testing as you never know what will happen if you put a real strain on the battery. Take care, don't feel sorry for people! A 12-volt car battery exploded next to me. no fun at all!