Testing of Hour and Volt meters
 

I've got several old hour and volt meters laying around and I was wondering what is the proper way to test them and can they be hooked directly to a twelve volt battery.I tried this with one of the volt meters and it threw sparks no matter how I hooked it up.Something tells me I should'nt do that no more.(LOL):bigthink:

Do you mean an amp meter? That would be a direct short circuit and would not be good. An amp meter goes in series with a load on it to be tested. A volt meter can go across the terminals.

Yep,I meant amp meter sorrry about that,and that would explain the sparks.Well now I suppose I only have two extra amp meters.But is there a way to bench test these outside of the wiring harness?I'm trying to get rid of some junk and was wondering if I could find out if they work or not & that would tell me whether to keep or to trash them.Thanks

You need to put some type of load on the battery and have one terminal from the amp meter go to the battery and the other to the load that your using. I guess you could also put the positive terminal of a battery charger on one terminal and a wire going to the positve of the battery and charge it.