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Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
Hi there, do-it-yourselfers. Today, we're gonna be taking a look and covering some of the features of Performance Tool's, hook probe circuit tester. A test light's a great object for verifying whether you've got power and ground at a specific location. It's also really useful if you're setting up lights on your vehicle for trailer lighting, so you can test your circuits and get those installed. So real quick, we're just going to show you here, how it works, one end needs to have ground, and the other end needs to have power in order to light the light. So we're gonna take the clip end here, we're gonna put this on the negative side of our battery for brown.
And then if we press in on the plastic sleeve here, that'll expose the probe at the end. We're just gonna touch this to the positive side. You can see there that it lights up our test light. This will also work if you we're to hook it up backwards. So if he's got the clip on power and you we're to use your probe and touch any ground point, it should also light up.
So you can see your ground on the battery or ground over here on anywhere on the vehicle frame or anything like that. Lets see if there's a bolt right down here. Look at that there, we got the power, it's lighting up our test light because that's ground and we've got power coming from the clip side. Our customers typically use these to check their circuits, especially if they're either setting up a four-pole connector on their vehicle, or if they've recently just taken their vehicle and they hooked it up to their trailer and they found, "oh no, the lights aren't working on my trailer." Well now you've got to figure out why the lights don't work and the test light can be a great tool to help you determine that. One of the first things that I would do if I had an issue with my trailer not working properly is I wanna verify is the issue with my trailer, or is it with my vehicle And I'd start here on the vehicle and check this out.
So we've got our four pole tester here which gives us all of our necessary lighting signals, in order to get these to operate without an assistant, we can go ahead and turn on our hazard lights that will operate both the left and the right turn signal. And we can go ahead and turn on our tail lights for our last circuit, the fourth circuit there is your ground and that's the exposed lug there. We went ahead and used the clip to clip it onto the ground side. So now we've got those lights operating. We should get some signals from the first one here next to it's going to be our tail lights.
We should have a constant voltage it should light up our light and look at that, there we go. So we know our taillight signal is working properly on the vehicle. Next is the yellow circuit, which is our left turn signal. And we can see it's flashing, so we know that our left turn signal is working properly. And lastly is the green circuit that's our right turn signal and it's working as well. So we plugged this vehicle into a trailer and the trailer doesn't function, there's some issues on our trailer side, maybe there's a ground missing to the light that's not functioning or maybe there's just an open and the power circuit go into it. But we know, at this point that our vehicle is working properly and we can continue the diagnosis over on that side. And while we we're showing it off on a four-pole here, it's also great for testing out your six and seven-pole connectors as well. You just need to make sure you've got a way to activate the particular circuits to make sure they're working. For example, like your seven way, your auxiliary circuit probably is going to have 12 volts on it at all times, but some of those require the vehicle to be started in order to get that 12 volt output. Likewise, your brake output circuit for your trailer brakes aren't gonna activate unless you've got an assistant inside either pressing the brakes or activating the manual slider. But if you've got somebody to help you out, you can check all those circuits with this as well. So now, since we know that our problem is not with our vehicle, you can go ahead and plug your vehicle out to your trailer, or you could use a test box. We've gone ahead and plugged up and got our tail lights turned on and our light here is not functioning. So let's check our circuits and see if we can figure out the issue. I've gone ahead and clipped the wire there where the ground wire was attached. We could potentially just have an issue with our ground, but we're gonna go ahead and use that and see if we can get a reading here. So here's our two circuits coming from the front, you got a green wire there and a brown one. Brown is your typical color for your taillight circuit. So I'm just gonna push this away from the probe there. Gonna slide it over and then I'm now letting it return. And we're gonna stab into the wire. And with our taillights on, if we've got a good ground here at the back, we should get a reading. Now, even though brown is the most common color, that's not always the case though sometimes it can be another color. So we have nothing here. So we're just gonna go ahead and probe the other wire. 'Cause even though brown is the most common, it doesn't necessarily mean that the manufacturer, followed that particular color coding. So now we are on the other one, we're gonna probe into that one, and we've got nothing on that one either. So that probably leads us to believe that we either have a short from, other than just to believe that we have an open in our circuit here preventing current from getting to the back or that we've potentially got a bad ground here at the back. We're gonna take that clip off the ground circuit, where we had it, where it was getting ground from before. And we're gonna move it to a new spot here on the trailer. 'Cause we should have good ground just about anywhere on the frame, as long as the paint's not too thick. And look at that, we moved it over to the other stud there. We kinda rocked it around to clear up some of the rust on it and we've got power which we now know that from the vehicle all the way back to our circuit here is good. So the only issues that's potentially left is our ground or the bulbs could be burnt out. But since we moved our circuit from where the ground wire is here over to a different spot we got our lights light up. I suspect our issue is more than likely with our ground here. So we're just gonna go ahead and tighten the circuit up, kinda clean up that rust there and see if we can't get this light to come back on. And that's all it took, I just took that bolt loose. I knocked some of the rust off with a wire brush, re-installed it and now our light's functioning. So you can see our test light was able to help us determine that the issue was on the trailer side and also figure out where that issue was. And that completes our look at Performance Tool's, hook probe circuit tester..
Average Customer Rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (49 Customer Reviews)
Haven't needed this tool yet but good to have it in my 12 volt electrical kit.
Easy installation.
I sold the trailer shortly after installing this item.
It worked well for the amount of time that I owned the trailer.
I bought this prob/circuit tester in order to make some minor electrical repairs to our Scamp 13. I carry it along on all our trips. It has been tremendously helpful isolating shorts that result from vibration and wear and tear. Furthermore, the tutorial videos here on etrailer have been equally helpful.
Quality item. Works great for quick DC tests.
Simple tester, does what its supposed to do.
Very easy to use.
Will come in handy.
Not what worked for me.
Looks to be well constructed & easy to use. Frees up your hands for other tasks, & has many other circuit tracing applications as well.
I had a tester like this years ago and I broke the end off.
I really liked the tester as you can hook it over a wire and probe it to see
if you have voltage.
Been looking for one for a long time.
You can find cheap junk ones but this one is just like the good one I had years ago.
Glad I found it and is is very well built.
Should last me a long time.
Was shipped fast also.
Will try and not break this one.
Thanks e trailer.
great company to deal with. thanks
Vary good for my trailer.
Probe works really good
Terry
3/19/2022
Tester has worked out really well, only used it a few times
Fast service for the tool I needed.
I have yet to use it. It looked like something I should have so I ordered one.
Easy to use and definitely helpful when looking for a specific wire.
Ricky C.
1/26/2022
Works Fine
Nice tool to own!
Works perfect
Looks good, haven't used it yet
Very friendly service, thank you Korren. Ordered on Tuesday, received on Thursday.
This will be very handy when working with circuits.
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Scamper
11/10/2023
Reliable and useful as ever.