Found a better way to trace intermittent shorts in wire bundles

For years I chased intermittent shorts the old way, wiggling bundles and watching a multimeter like a hawk. Took me 3 days on a Cessna 172 last month before I gave up and tried a cheap tone generator and probe set I'd been ignoring in my toolbox. Now I inject the tone, work the wire in sections, and the tone drops right when I hit the bad spot. It turned a 6 hour guess into a 40 minute job. Anyone else use tone gear for this, or do you still swear by the wiggle method?

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alicec861mo agoMost Upvoted

Man, I had a friend who fought a 1970s Ford pickup wiring gremlin for a whole weekend. He was out there wiggling the dash harness with a test light clipped to the battery, cussing every time it flickered. He got so fed up he ran the truck through a car wash just to see if water made it act up. Turns out it was a corroded splice hidden inside the factory tape wrap, right where the bundle bent behind the glove box. After that he bought a tone kit and now he uses it on every car that comes through his garage, swears he wont go back. It's the difference between guessing and knowing, I guess.