Old lady in Tempe taught me the pencil trick for dryer thermostats

Had a customer call me out to fix her dryer not heating. She watched me test the thermal fuse, then handed me a dull pencil and said "check the element with the lead, not your meter." I touched the pencil tip across the terminals and got a spark, element was fine, ended up being a bad thermostat I'd have missed. Anyone else got a weird customer hack that actually works better than standard testing?

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1 Comment

the_derek1mo ago

Laughing my ass off at the idea of grandma out here with a #2 pencil doing more accurate diagnostics than my $300 Fluke. I bet she's got a whole toolbox of tricks like that too, probably uses a butter knife to check gas valves and a paperclip for igniters. Gotta respect the old school methods though, they been doing this since before digital meters even existed. Now I'm half tempted to start carrying a pencil pouch on my truck just to mess with the younger techs.