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Fuel pump current with high amp clamp? (Read 1,329 times)
TrevorSchlientz
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Fuel pump current with high amp clamp?
Apr 12th, 2022 at 11:33am
 
While attending Vision this year in Kansas City someone made a comment to me about the the TA388 high current clamp that I found surprising. This person said that the TA388 was sensitive enough to do fuel pump current testing.

Below is a capture of a fuel pump current pattern comparing 2 different low current clamps and the TA388. The low probes are indistinguishable which was to be expected. What I did not expect was for the high amp clamp with its comparatively huge 31mm jaw and 2000 amps of range to measure within a couple tenths of an amp of the low probes.

What do you think? If you could do the vast majority of the tests you would want to with a single amp clamp, would you?

The second picture is the same type of comparison testing but this time its examining ignition coils and fuel injectors through the shared fuse.  This time I also added Pico's premium low current clamp the TA189 on channel D.

The TA388 does read at about 0.5 amps while the other 3 read 0 and the signal is a little bit fuzzier but the delta between the the signal peaks and minimums is less than 0.1Amps across all 4 probes.
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JÜJA
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Re: Fuel pump current with high amp clamp?
Reply #1 - Apr 13th, 2022 at 6:14am
 
An impressing performance of the TA 388, indeed... With regards to doing the vast majority of tests with one clamp I (still) prefer the TA 473 but this may change. I'll have to  confirm an acceptable accuracy within these low current ranges first.

Thank you for bringing this to our knowledge 😊.
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Sam M.
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Re: Fuel pump current with high amp clamp?
Reply #2 - Apr 14th, 2022 at 2:37am
 
+1 here on JUJA's feedback, super impressive.

Thank you Trevor for showing this.

My go to is the TA473 whenever possible, but I will start experimenting with my TA388 for lower amperage measurements as well.
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