I own a Snap-On BK5600 bore scope and their Blue Point Microscan OBD II diagnostics scanner.
I bought both at very reasonable cost on eBay and both were ‘as new’ condition. The original price of the BK5600 bore scope was something like £700 ! I paid around £80 for mine. The Blue Point Microscan is priced at around £400 and I paid £50 for mine. Deals like this are quite common when agents sell their demonstration products.
Why is Snap-On kit so expensive ? Well why is any specialist kit expensive ..... because the Manufacturer decides that the market will pay the asking price. Simple ! Where medical kit is concerned there is a lot of safety compliance testing, certification etc and so the inflated prices may be more justifiable. With garage kit, the garages need robust and reliable test kit with good support. That is what Snap-On trades on. They offer lifetime, no quibble replacement on some tools so you effectively pay fir that in the original price. Other kit is sold with same day or next day replacement guarantee if it fails. This is important for a busy garage. Garages charge decent money for repair and servicing so they can afford £500 on a meter that carries the respected Snap-On brand name and associated support. My local garage is excellent and charges fair prices. I know the owner and to hear what he has to pay for diagnostic equipment and then an annual subscription to use it makes my eyes water. Garages are ‘victims’ of the motor industries desire to make third party serving difficult and expensive. We are back to Louis Rossmanns ‘Right to Repair’ argument in some ways. Third party suppliers of advanced vehicle diagnostic equipment only have to compete against the crazy prices asked my the Car Manufacturers for such kit. This sets an environment in which ANY electronics diagnostic kit costs a small fortune and some require a support contract or subscription to continue their use ! Not unlike other hardware systems I have worked on in other specialist fields.
So this Multimeter is around £500 in the UK. Such a price would not be a surprise to most garages and they will pay it rather than take a risk on buying a multimeter from an unknown brand with unknown support quality. There is also the ‘customer expects Snap-On tools’ mentality that supports buying high quality tools from Snap-On. Are those tools worth the asking price ? That is for you to decide. My video borescooe and Microscan are excellent bits of kit that work very well
The video borescope has a very small diameter tip equipped with two CCD cameras to see straight ahead or to provide a 90 degree view (great for piston crown and cylinder inspections). The view is selected by a simple touch of the LCD screen
No messing with angled mirror tips here ! A very nice and useful, bit of kit in both the garage and home environments. The OBD II unit is well designed and built. It does its job well but so do many Asia sourced scanners ! I own some of the Chinese scanners and they can be very good as well. Good ones can still be quite expensive though.
For information, Snap-On have two ranges.... the Red cased Snap-On range and the Blue cased Blue Point range. The Red range is normally custom made for Snap-On but the Blue-Point range is usually a bought in product that Snap-On want to offer under their “3rd Party Tool” branding of Blue Point.
Back to the multimeter in question..... it is a Snap-On Red cased unit so built under contract for Snap-On. By who ?..... No idea
It offers a easily held unit with large colour display for ease of visibility when viewing from a distance or in poor lighting. The measurement functions match those needed in the garage environment and the format of the buttons etc is intended to make it easy to use. The unit will also be sealed against moisture and dirt ingress. Worth £500 ? Well a FLUKE 87V is not exactly cheap is it and much of the cost is down to the FLUKE name, so yes, I think a garage will consider £500 for such a meter affordable. Heck when they have to pay £15K for a OBD II diagnostics unit and a further £1500 per year for its licence subscription, £500 for a Snap-On meter actually sounds cheap !
Such a meter would likely sell for around £150 on the secondary market and garages often get discounts from Snap-On.
Get to know your local independent garage owner, like I did, and you will soon realise what rich pickings the garage equipment suppliers have in the industry and why you have to pay your garage £75/hour for labour. I had to pay £10 per tyre to have four tyres taken off their wheel rims and that was less than 15 minutes work. I understand that garage servicing is even more expensive in the USA.
Fraser
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