Anyone know which of our batteries is considered the primary one? I just got a new bed mount salt spreader and have been reading up on the install and it says to "always connect to the primary battery if using a dual battery system" and I am not sure which one is considered the primary.

 

I think they mean dual battery setups where one is isolated when the engine is off, like a house battery/camper battery etc. The way our batteries are connected in parallel it is more of a battery bank, with the same amps and volts available at both, they both charge evenly and they both draw down evenly, engine on or off. Think of it as just one big 12 volt battery.

 

No primary,both do the same thing

 

Our batteries are wired in parallel so they are equal Jason. If there were isloated as said before the primary battery would be the one that was generally used for starting the truck.

 

Cool, thank you very much guys. I hadn't noticed anyone refer to a primary battery on our trucks and I actually did a search of this forum before starting the thread and couldn't find anything so I just wanted to make sure. Now it will be there for future electrically challenged people to search.

 

So, does this mean that disconnecting and reconnecting batteries require no special sequence?
Just wandering as some of the info I have read refers to a particular sequence involving as "they refer to it" the primary (passenger side) and secondary (driver side) batteries.
My experience has been that the passenger side (primary) battery has always been the one to fail first and I have also noticed there has been more acid vapors emitted from the vent caps causing the battery cover to deteriorate much faster than the other one.

Just some observations, but curious.

 

So, if you have to have a jump start or jump start another truck, you use either side? And charge either side?

 

Those big honkin' cables join the batteries as one. The only difference between the two is the passenger is in the middle of the 12V cable and the driver side is on the end of the 12V cable.

If one battery has any different behavior at all, that would have to be because the opposite battery had a bad connection, or the they were not replaced as a matched pair.

 

You got it.

 

Technically no because there in fact is a sequence in which you should always disconnect your batteries- DISCONNECT the NEGATIVE battery first ALWAYS .
However, when CONNECTING the batteries, always connect the positive(red) cable first, then the negative(black) last.

 

Hammer and nails, 9 year old thread on the new end and 12+ year old on the old end. Plus a double post. Just saying.

 

There is no existing FTE guideline that forbids bringing up older threads.

If resurrecting older threads were against FTE guidelines, then all threads prior to an arbitrarily set period of time would be locked, or removed from the publicly accessible archive, to eliminate the administrative burden of enforcing such a guideline.

But since no such guideline exists, there is no need for moderators, or for members, to try and enforce it.

A few years ago, FTE forum software was "enhanced" to incorporate an automatically generated "Related Threads" feature.

"Related Threads" is driven by an algorithmic search of keywords related to the thread being currently read, and the related threads that the search engine finds appear by title, as if current threads, at the end of the active thread being read.

The idea is to maintain reader engagement with the site. Call it clickbait. It also could be called useful, since many users only visit FTE to solve a problem, and if the problem relates to a 24 year old truck, it doesn't matter if the problem happened to someone else in 2022 or in 2002. It's the same truck, same problem, and likely the same solution resolved in the older thread will be relevant to the issue the newer visitor is seeking resolutions for.

What also happens is that related threads pique the interest (as intended, to lengthen reader engagement) of other members who may not have ever seen that thread before, and having now read the thread, find that the thread was left lingering with a point of ambiguity, which they happened to have a definitive answer for, so they contribute to the community by providing their answer. These members should not be scolded for doing so.

Before I turned the "Related Threads" feature OFF using the User Control Panel (which all members can do), I would be drawn into threads having no idea what the date of the thread was. It wasn't like I reached back to page 500 of the thread index and plucked out a thread at random. No, these older related threads are self-presented right there with the current thread. More often than not, I would scroll very quickly through a currently active thread, speed reading the gist of it, in the haste of my scrolling, not even realized that I reached the end of the current thread and was now scrolling through an automatically populated "Related Thread". Because the thread was in fact related, and on the same topic, it was not immediately self-evident that I was in a different thread. The reading intrigue is vested with the words, not the dates.

Let's remember that the "Related Threads" feature exists, and not everyone has it turned off. Let us also remember that many of the contributions that members have made over the years are as timeless as the trucks about which their comments were made. Finally, let us likewise anticipate that next year, and over the next decade, another high school lad who was just bestowed his grandpa's old Ford pickup will search our archives for information on how to take care of it, and the ideas from FTE members past and present need not be mutually exclusive.

Thanks for your understanding!