Test your car’s electrical circuits as you build
Test circuits as you build with an easy to carry M12 battery kit with fused protection and a reverse-polarity switch for testing components in both directions.
When you’re wiring a car, you don’t always have power when you need it. You may still have the dash apart while you finish the main wiring.
But you’re installing gauges, heater components, stereo equipment, power windows and other 12V electrical components.
Some of those parts are about to disappear behind the dash. It would be nice to know they work first.
Test it before you close it up
Builders often wait until they finish wiring the car before testing everything.
That can mean leaving parts of the build open longer than you’d like. Or you close everything up and hope you don’t have to get back in there later. We’re developing Night Owl Test to provide another option.
It uses an M12 battery to provide 12V power for testing individual automotive circuits and components as you build.
Finish a circuit. Test it. Then keep going.
If you’re installing a power window, you can test it before putting the door back together. If you’ve finished part of the dash wiring, you can check the components before closing up the dash.
You don’t need to wait until the whole vehicle electrical system is ready.
12V power you can move around the car easily
You can test automotive electrical components with a car battery. Sure, that works.
But car batteries are heavy and awkward to move around. They need to stay upright. And you probably don’t want to keep moving one from one side of a project to the other.
An M12 battery is small and easy to carry to wherever you’re working. We’re designing Night Owl Test with a terminal strip for connecting wires and a probe for electrical testing.. We are also developing it to existing Power Probe accessories that you may already have in the shop.
We’re also adding a reverse-polarity switch. That’s useful for testing something like a power window motor. Flip the switch one way to test one direction and the other way to test the reverse, without having to swap your connections.
It doesn’t have to stay with the car
Testing circuits during a build is the main reason we’re developing Night Owl Test, but the same portable 12V power source can be useful for other jobs.
You could use it for bench testing an automotive electrical component before installing it. It could help with troubleshooting a circuit. A shop could also use it to check components from a vehicle or test customer returns.
The basic job is the same. You need 12V power to test something, but you don’t need to power the whole vehicle to do it.
Another way to work without vehicle power
Night Owl Test is part of the same idea that started the Night Owl series.
Night Owl Light lets you work on a vehicle with service lights while the vehicle electrical system stays off.
Night Owl Cool uses an M18 battery to run the fan and water pump in the pits without drawing from the race-car battery.
Night Owl Test brings independent power into the build itself.
It’s still under development. We’re working through the details and testing different ways people might use it.
If you’d like to follow the build, sign up for the Steel Sasquatch newsletter. We’ll share updates as Night Owl Test develops and let subscribers know when we’re ready to put early units into the hands of testers.
