Good morning SF.

One of the things I have started to learn about in my retirement is all things electrical. Now I am a fledgling amateur at best but so far I haven’t electrocuted myself so we are moving in the right direction!

I am looking to get a reasonably priced clamp meter for doing household and automotive projects and was wondering if this is a decent product or if you have a better alternative…
Thanks!
https://www.amazon.com/Klein-T...ps%2C178&sr=8-1&th=1

That will do well for you.
I'm a snob but will admit that Klein is pretty solid for the price.

For automotive, you will need one that goes down to milliamps and has a large enough opening for battery cables, you will most likely need two meters, one for house and vehicles.

So I'd spend the extra money for the CL390, Especially if you want to mess with DC. They use hall effect sensors for the clamp.

The 120 is AC only iirc.

Another contender is one Kobalt makes. #59 gets you a meter, outlet tester, and hot loop isolator plug.

I have a CL390 and I briefly had the Kobalt. Both will do general duty work but I wanted the extra peace of mind with the certifications the Klein holds for some of the things I have planned.

To Echo vulrath, Kobalt makes some quality stuff at decent prices, and you'll get a few add on bits that might help with future projects.

They do, but the most important thing is that you definitely need to make sure you get something that does AC and DC, especially if you plan on doing anything automotive.

Thanks guys. It looks like the CL 390 it is. Now to find one…

quote:

Originally posted by rizzle:
For automotive, you will need one that goes down to milliamps and has a large enough opening for battery cables, you will most likely need two meters, one for house and vehicles.

I can’t remember the brand, but the one I bought to track down a parasitic loss on my Dad’s Corvette has a smaller clamp for the battery cable than the one I use for the house. The smaller clamp allows it to be more sensitive and pickup mA.

For the house, I bought a Klein. Of course the first thing I did was clamp a cord to an appliance to see how many amps it was pulling and got a reading of 0. You have to clamp one wire, not both. Doh!

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by rizzle:

For the house, I bought a Klein. Of course the first thing I did was clamp a cord to an appliance to see how many amps it was pulling and got a reading of 0. You have to clamp one wire, not both. Doh!

One of these will help with that.

That link says I purchased the Klein 69409 April of 2023.

The multimeter I bought specifically for the Corvette issue was an ESI 688, but I only paid about $225 for it. They seem to be significantly more now.

quote:

Originally posted by FiveFiveSixFan:

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by rizzle:

For the house, I bought a Klein. Of course the first thing I did was clamp a cord to an appliance to see how many amps it was pulling and got a reading of 0. You have to clamp one wire, not both. Doh!

One of these will help with that.

That's cool. Do you just plug your device into one end and the other end into your power source?

Yes. All it does is split the wires out to give you room to clamp the meter over one wire. If you clamp the meter over the hot and the neutral, the amperage should be zero because the current in flow on the hot should be the same as the outflow on the neutral and they cancel. If not, then you have leakage.

quote:

Originally posted by rizzle:
For automotive, you will need one that goes down to milliamps and has a large enough opening for battery cables, you will most likely need two meters, one for house and vehicles.

This. You would do better with a Klein MM600 DVM to handle both House and Auto. You'll probably never need an Ammeter, typically more advanced than for people like you and me who might get themselves killed with household current. And that meter you're suggesting probably doesn't have enough low-value mA Resolution for reliable automobile live current draw testing for typical uses in diagnosing parasitic draw. For that case you regular DVM will do a better job with that anyway.

Whatever you get, Klein meters are great value, and highly rated all around except, for the most precise types of work in professional industrial or electronic settings, but those units START at more than $600. For your purposes you'll do great with any Klein unit for $50 more or less.

That's the one I have. I've had it a handful of years. Works great. Simple. How often will you really need it? A few times a year? It's good to go!