TIL a retired guy in Fresno taught me the coin trick for finding a bad compressor winding
Stopped by a garage sale in Fresno last Saturday and got chatting with the owner, who fixed fridges for 35 years. He grabbed a fridge compressor off his bench and showed me you can feel a shorted winding just by spinning the shaft and listening for a drag that shouldn't be there, cheaper than digging out the meter every time. He called it "the dime trick" and swore by it on service calls where he was in a hurry. Been trying it on scrap units all week and it's been dead on so far, though I still check with the meter when the call matters. Anyone else pick up tricks like this from old timers at sales or swap meets?
Old timers just know stuff, plain and simple. Spinning the shaft to feel the drag is a good tell, but yeah, meter still comes out when someone's paying. Swap meets are gold for tricks like that.