I have a 2001 F-250 Crew cab Lariat with a Power Stroke Diesel 146 K miles...

Been a great truck so far with very little trouble.


I asked my son to pull the truck out of the garage Wed. afternoon,and he came back and reported that the truck (electrically) looked weak and would not turn over.

It was basically dead when I got to it without the power to even trigger the dome light.

I checked the basics to see that nothing had been left on to kill the batteries,and so far as I could tell,nothing had been?

I've had very little time to troubleshoot any of this ,however I started by disconnecting the batteries and I thought I'd throw a charge on them first. The batteries are Sears Diehards that purchased new in Nov of 2012.
Both batteries seem reluctant to fully charge,as the charging rate does not relly go down as it should.One battery is worse than the other where the charging rate stays up around 8 amps and the other is at least down to 4 (with less charging time). Neither battery sufficiently charged to shut the charger down.

Is it possible I have a bad battery or batteries? If one is bad could it discharge the other from just sitting 24 hrs?

Is there an inherent problem with my truck where theres a sticking relay or something that would discharge the batteries?

I have not tried connecting the batterie to see if it will start yet.I thought I'd throw it out here first to see if you guys could lend some insight?

Thanks in advance...

Rick

 

Rick one of the problems with batteries that are in series or parrallel attachment like our trucks is if one battery is weak [or worse dead/bad] it will draw the other down in an effort to equalize the charge....hence the reason some vehicles use isolated battery electronics to prevent this.

It sounds like you had a weak or bad battery that drained the other [2 bad batteries are rare but possible].

You are now going to have to charge them both up fully on a slow charge and have them tested to see which one is bad....or perhaps you have a warranty on your batteries and you can just take them back for new ones?

Once you get good batteries in the truck you can test for a draw....fastest way is to grab a test light and remove one post connector, slide the test light probe between the post and the connector [so effectively the probe become the connection not the connector] and see how bright it gets [dont forget to attach the alligator clamp for the light to the opposite post or it wont ever light up].....if it comes on bright you have a draw; if it comes on very dim it may just be the radio etc [anything that has a memory]. You can actually do this before you make the final connection to the newly installed or charged batteries.

If you have a multimeter you can do all this without removing the battery terminals...effectively you do the same thing only more accurately.

 

Thanks for the advise Cuda...

I actually was able to finally charge the batteries (took forever).

Once I thought I had enough charge in them I used the test light to look into things. The test light was lite somewhat dimmly. I decided to try and pull fuses until the testlight either went out,or got even dimmer. When I got to the radio fuse,that seemed to make the most difference. There was anothe 50 amp fuse that went said (I think) power block,and that one made d difference too.

When I measured the current ,it measured 6.88 A DC when the radio fuse was in,and 5.3 A DC when I removed it.Funny thing is,is that with the radio fuse in,there was quite an arc (by comparision) when I made the circuit with the meter leads. When I removed the radio fuse,the readind was 5.3 A DC ( a 1.5A difference in current flow) and there was almost no arc. It seemed odd that 1.5 amps diffference would make that much difference?

I put the battery cables back on and the truck started fine.

I've removed the radio fuse,to see if it discharges tonight.

Any thoughts on what I've experienced so far?

Rick

 

Hummmm...if the arc was noticeable i would be a little suspicious of that circuit. Radio's do draw continuously but a 6.5 amp load is pretty heavy for radio memory in sleep mode.

Your on the correct path in your diag...without seeing the truck it's now going to get harder but what you are doing is exactly how we would do it anyways so keep moving in the current direction....ill help you as much as i can.

 

Thanks for the help Cuda...


The radio only seemed to be responsible for about 1.5 amps ,as that was how much it dropped when I disconnected it. There was still 5.3 amps registering on the meter with it disconnected? The odd thing was that there was no where near as much arc with that load,vs when I put the radio fuse back in ,which was then registering 6.8 amps?

I'm going out now to check the status of the system ie: see if the truck starts.....


Rick

 

My 2008 SD battery was going down after sitting for 4 days----pulling the radio fuses (2), one 5amp, one 30amp---it could sit for days and not go down. There was a CD hung up in the player part of the radio, and it wouldn't eject. I pulled the radio and installed an aftermarket radio. I never had the problem again, Dennis.

 

Denola....

I almost mentioned in my last post that I had the same issue with my CD Player... It's been that way for years, with some effort,I was usually able to eject the CD's and change them when necessary (Not very often though). The latest round was about a week and a half ago,and boy was it difficult. As a matter of fact,I could not get it to eject the CD's. Kept coming up with an error. I finally gave up,then noticed last weekend that the CD was ejected.

It did enter my mind that something of this nature could be an issue.

I went out and started the truck a few minutes ago,and all seemed fine. Crank speed seemed good. I did this several times,and it reacted normally.

I then measured the voltage at the battries and it registerd 12.10 VDC.
I started the truck took another measurement (about 11.7VDC) I kept my meter on it and it slowly crept up to 12.8 VDC. I then turned on the headlights, A/C (fan on High) ,and turned the flashers on. Remeasured Voltage at 12.4 VDC. Turned all off and was at 12.8 VDC once again.

I'm going to keep the radio (20 A) fuse out for now ,and monitor whether or not there's a discharge.

Anyone else had this issue or have any comments?

Thanks !!!

Rick

 

Rick, my truck has a gas engine, so, I just have one battery. I went so far as to replace my battery, thought I had it fixed, then, it happened again. I pulled a draw test, and found I had a few amperage of draw. I figured it was the memory on the radio, but that shouldn't pull the battery down. We had a power outage, due to a storm, and I was just killing time, waiting for the power to come on in my shop. I started trying to get the radio to eject the CD, but it wouldn't----only flash error. That was when it all started. I installed a JVC radio and had no more problems for the last three months. After I got the old radio out, I removed the face plate and got two CDs out of it with needle nose pliers. It drove me up the wall trying figure out my problem. Hope I was able to help you with yours, Dennis.

 

What you (Dennis ) and Cuda did was give me idea's and a place to start,along with backing up whatever somewhat(sometimes) crazy theories that I have regarding what may or may not be a problem.

I thank you both for taking the time to impart your experience.

I'm going to let things stand as they are for a while,to make sure that this (radio) was the problem.

I will do a follow-up post with whatever results I experience.

Thank you both again.


Rick

 

Well ....... Sorry to say this ,but my batteries are discharged again. All seemed OK at first,with me just leaving the radio fuse out,but today the truck was dead again.

The difference is that I let it sit (just didn't need it ) for two days straight,whereas initially earlier this week, I was forced to use it every day (about 24hrs apart).

The cranking speed seemed normal so I thought all was good ,and that the batteries weren't discharging.

At any rate ,the fuse that gave me the most draw using the test light,was fuse #22 ( 50 amp ) ,which says is for the "junction box battery feed" . Anybody know where that is or what it does?

I don't have an electrical diagram for the truck and I don't know where ,or what other distribution this handles.

Help ??????


Rick

 

stinks trying to chase this down. similar issue 05 F350 6.0 one time leave it for a week, no problem. next time leave it 2-3 days and DEAD. Kenwood stereo this spring can't remember if its done it since I put the stereo in for sure. I think it has

 

OK.....

New developement here.

First off,thanks to all again for replying to this...

I was really sick yesterday ,and had to just lay back and do nothing. Not 100 % today ,but better .

I received a reply to an inquiry I put out as a private message question. I did a google search (Thursday?) and it led to a thread on the forums here,that was similar to my problem. The problem was that there was no resolution to the issue posted,so I decided to PM the party involved and ask him direct.

That party got back with me yesterday,saying that his issue was his alternator,but not in the way you might think. He said that after his truck would sit with the key off,the alternator would get warm?

Since I was sick yesterday, my truck sat with the batteries charged but disconnected from Friday,when I recharged the batteries. The truck was stone cold,so I pushed it out of garage enough to get at the front. I connected the batteries,and felt the alternator. Seemed like ambient temperature. 10 minutes later I felt it again... this time,it felt as if it might have built little heat in it,but ramping down from being sick,I wasn't sure? I asked my wife to feel it and she said it felt a little warmer than what was around it.

About this time I thought about running over to our offce to get our Thermal Imaging Camera,but then thought I'd ask my neighbor across the street if he had a temp gun? He actually had a thermal imaging camera,so we looked at it with that,and by the time we got the camera and he came over (maybe 30 minutes) ,there was a noticable difference in alternator temp..

We tracked the temp for the next 10 minutes. You can see that the core is pretty hot and the temp went from around 97.5 degrees F to 116 degrees F . The camera was not quite aimed at the same spot in each reference picture,but you get the idea.

The motor was stone cold and in the shade. The temp outside maybe 80 degrees F. The ignition was off.

My alternator is coming up on 4 yrs old, from Napa,and you guessed it, out of warrenty (3yrs).

I'm going to call a newly found shop that does rebuilding tommorrow, to see why this would be ,and to have my alternator rebuilt,if necessary.

Any ideas why this would be happening?

 

Bad diodes starting to leak back. Might be able to see it as a abnormal wave pattern on an oscilloscope.

 

OK, Apologies first for hi-jacking this thread, but I've got a similar problem with my 99 F250 Dsl. I thought I had bad alternator and replaced that. But, Now I've got the batt dash light that stay's on for a minute, then goes out. It does this off & on while I'm driving. Comes on for a while, then goes out.

The batt's seemed to be charging OK just after I replaced the Alt, but now they are slowly discharging and do not seem to be fully recharged after I've ran the truck for a while.

Batt's are less than 2yrs, both are same type & date.

Do I still have an alt problem or is this something else?

 

GLAD you found the problem
Leaking diodes or a shorted reg can cause this. It would definitely show up in a proper alternator test. Bummer about the just out of warrantee thing ...