The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest Infrared thermometer

I got an Email from Tooltopia today. At this price everyone should own one.

http://www.tooltopia.com/mastercool-52224a-sp.aspx

Thanks for the Heads up Cletis... Ordered.

That is a good price. I think I paid about $50 for mine five years ago. A very handy tool!

$44.69 with shipping...to my pad. Good buy.

Thanks for the tip Charlie. I have one somewhere, but you have seen my place. I can't always find things when I need them. I could have used one yesterday. A relay started heating, and I had to find the weak connection with my finger. So needless to say, I ordered another one.

Never felt the need for one of them bad enough to pay the price. But that's even cheaper by nearly ten bucks than the one Harbor Freight sells. So Charlie, since I don't have one and a man has to have one of everything, I dun let ya talk me into ordering one.
I did a series of tests pertaining to the percolation problems with the Stovebolt’s a few years back. I was trying to isolate the hesitation that is do common with these engines. I used an Omega digital temperature monitor with a thermocouple. That has a very slow response time. That infrared unit would have been a better choice because of the response time, if it's accurate that is. The more I think about it the more uses I can see for one. When I was into the airplanes, since they were air cooled we used the cylinder head temperature to monitor the performance of the engine. It would be interesting to see what the different temps are around the Stovebolt also. Such as different points on the block, head, intake and exhaust. Would come in handy if you were having vapor lock problems with your hot rod.

Tool Topia has some really good prices. Much of what they sell is drop shipped from another vendor or directly from the manufacturer. I bought a couple of KD valve spring compressors from them a few months ago. The small one was in a blister pack and was missing one set of jaws. Took four phone calls and about a month and a half to get it rectified. Reason being that, although they listed the tool in their catalog they are not a KD dealer, so they had to order it from a KD dealer who had to order it from the KD factory. I gotta say though, the girls on the phone were very sympathetic and as helpful as they could be and we finally got it straight.
And if you need a few more trinkets for your tool box and can scrape together enough for a $100 order the shipping is nixed. That’s what I did this time for the temp monitor.

DG

you're funny Denny spend another 60 bucks to save the $6 shipping on an item that would be 60$ more elsewhere

for accuracy, the important part isn't the unit, but the operator - notice that one of the specs is the "DS ratio", Distance to Spot, which is most commonly 12:1, meaning at a distance of 12" you're measuring the blackbody radiation over a spot of 1" diameter, so the further away you are the larger the area of measurement and the more likely there will be some 'spill over' from surrounding radiation - that behavior is the reason for the laser beam, aiming accuracy to localize spot measurements .... beyond that, and aside from manufacturing defects, the accuracy is as good as the math and physics that it's based on, they're all pretty much the same ... although because of my food processing business, I paid the price for a 3M unit that still meets scientific standards years later - no telling about the Chinese knock-offs

an interesting experiment with this type of non-contact radiation thermometer: point it up, the 'clear sky' temperature is the temperature of the bottom of the stratosphere, cloud temperatures show their reflectivity depending on density .... the "greenhouse effect"

Yeah, I'm a real piece of work all right Squeezer. But I did need the other tools that I ordered, cuz I didn't have them in the box either...

Got that stuff to day from Toll Topia, meter seems to work as it should, I walked aroiund shooting everything I could find with it and the temps seemed logical. Cept when I took a shot in the back of my mouth and it said I was down to 97.6°.

Denny G

That's fast shipping

Looks like the price jumpped up. $32.00 price is labeled sold out. It's now $37.00

$37 is still better than the Harbor Freight sale price.

I got an email from Tooltopia today saying that mine is back ordered for 2 weeks or more.

Boy, half of us Stovebolters must have made a run on Tool Topia for those thermometers based on Charlies tip, let see, that'd be about 12 thousand of us right?? No wonder they sold out..

Found a new use for it last night. My "big old wife" called me in for supper and I shot the goulash. I told her "anything under 130.5°F and she would have to warm it back up while went back out and finished what I was doing in the garage."
DG

...and HER response was.................. LOL
I did something similar once and I heard the garbage disposal going whrrrrrr as I went out the door

If your engine has a miss, you can instantly tell which cylinder by checking the header temps of each cylinder. The cylinder thats not firing will have a lot lower temperature.

$70 now.

The Harbor Freight CEN-TECH brand linked above will be going on sale for $27.99
if you purchase it on line, when you check out enter coupon code 39845060 it will drop the price.
Limit 4

I get the H.F. mailer it was listed in todays mail.


I did recieve my tool-topia mastercool infrared thermometer today

Thanks