AUTOOL Automotive Smoke Machine (SDT-103)

Smoke not come out , volume button damage . 12000 money cheating me in autool company

Funciona muy bien, super facil de usar , viene con todo y sus accesorios , muy recomendable!

This is great! Easy to use! I used a small amount of mineral oil. It makes a very good amount of smoke, it's adjustable, I turned the dial about half way. It connects with clamps to your positive and negative battery cable so it's totally portable to use outside if you're not able to work on your car at home. If you're in an apartment or don't have 110 AC, this is great because it runs off 12 volts DC. If you needed you could connect it to a power bank but the car battery works well . I was using it for approximately 10 minutes and it did not drain my car's battery to a point where it would not start. There was plenty of cranking power after I thought. I'm not sure how many amps it pulls . As far as the Air supply, It does not have a built-in one. You need external Air supply but you do not need to have shop air compressor, I used a bicycle pump with some acrylic tubing, a tire valve stem, hose adapters and a quick coupler for an air compressor hose for the female end to connect to the smoke machine. The bicycle pump method worked perfectly. I could control the flow of of air by hand. Very easy and there is no risk of pumping in too much air during your testing. You do not want to have a high amount of air pumping into that machine and filling up your engine Chambers with the too much air could blow something. Only need about 5 psi. No worries with there the bicycle pump method and it was very cheap to rig up. This is a must have diagnostic tool for all mechanics. This has helped me find vacuum leaks with ease. I would have never found this leak I had, it was a massive leak of air my car has in the throttle body area. It's in a tight spot. This helped me to determine where the exact leak was coming from. The TB gasket turned out to be fine after 35 years, it was the gasket to the air tube that seals around the mouth, which was an easy fix. I also had a small leak around and after market CAI intake elbow joint. I confirmed the repairs with the smoke test and the car ran much better. I recommend this.

This review is for the Autool Model SDT103 Smoke Leak Detector. I did a lot of research before buying this product. I opted for this unit, which has no internal compressor, because it has less parts to break and I have my own compressor. (It uses almost no air; just a trickle.) I also liked that it has flow control and a flow indicator. Please be aware, I've only used this unit one time, so I can't comment on its long term reliability. I read the instructions before using it, and the instructions are pretty well written, and describe how to operate it without a whole lot of difficult-to-understand broken English. The unit is pretty simple, so its operation is straightforward. I bought a little 3 ounce bottle of baby oil from CVS for a couple bucks. I put 20mL into the unit before turning it on (the instruction booklet said 10mL, but there were two stickers on the actual unit that said 20mL, so I used 20mL). I let the air flow through it for a minute or two before I turned on the smoke switch. The smoke took about 30 seconds to start coming out, and maybe 2 minutes before it got really thick. I used this for diagnosing a vacuum leak in the intake of my Ford Ranger. The smoke was nice and thick and was easily seen (see picture). The packaging is very good on this product. All accessories are in separate ziplock bags, very organized, very neat. All the accessories (hoses, wires, oil bottle, etc) seem to be very high quality. I was expecting a one-time use throw-away item, but this seems to be well made and has quality accessories. I'm surprised to hear that some people write reviews complaining about the smell of the unit after using it. It burns oil to generates smoke. The smoke smells like burning oil. Why would someone expect this unit to not smell like burned oil? This product saved me a lot of money going to a mechanic to diagnose the problem in my car. I'm also going to use it in the future to find exhaust leaks, and leaks in other sealed systems in my cars. I'm not a mechanic, but I do almost all the work on my cars and I think this will come in handy in the future. I recommend it.

I had low hopes for this due to the price compared to other "professional" units but it is surprisingly good! I've used it several times now in the process of restoring/ troubleshooting a '94 Land Rover engine and exhaust and it works perfectly. I'm glad I took a gamble on this one. I bought some UV reactive smoke juice with it, and while it smoked fine, it wasn't actually UV reactive, but it smells so bad it's easy to find the leaks!