You can make a "temp probe" with thermocouple wire. This is a pair of wires with one conductor being iron and the other being constantine (sp?) you simply tin the ends of each conductor and twist them together. Then put test lead connectors on the other end that fit the meter.

When I was in college I worked at an electronic component burnin house. We had thermocouples all over the place and it ran into an expense. We started doing the above and found no difference in reading from an expensive "thermocouple."

Good luck,

Larry,

What's the temp range of that set-up? Do you have a table or formula to convert voltage to temp?

Thanks,
Sixto
91 300SE
87 300SDL
83 300SD

picked up the 82139 multimeter today - it is definitely not on sale at the moment. however with a little sweet talking (read: pleading), the cashier honored the lowest price within the last 30 days, $19.99.

btw, it is one sweet little meter...

82139 is back in stock at Sears.com
 

...and liked the 82139 meter so much from the first posts in this thread that when I found it out of stock at the Sears on-line store, I clicked the little box for "email me when its back in stock". I just got the "back in stock at Sears.com" email notification yesterday, so I placed my order. I had a decent meter already, but it lacked the duty cycle feature I've heard I'll need if I ever mess about with my fuel injection.

sixto,

I don't have the slightest idea of the relationship between the iron/constantine signal and its interpretation on the meter. I fully expect that it is nonlinear. The reason I think that is the fact that in the early seventies we had expensive, single purpose instruments that we used to get digital temperature readout. Had it been a simple, linear relationship, then the voltmeters of the time could have provided this with simple analog electronic conversion.

Now that a "computer" is available inside these meters, the sky is the limit as far as conversions and scaling. Since this thread is indicating that you can get a meter capable of thermal display for $19.95, it's pretty difficult to justify much messing around.

Best of luck,