Good afternoon everyone. Been a while since ive been on. Mainly because the ol' 7.3 was running really good thanks to yalls help. Well I'm back for more wisdom.


Recap on truck stats: 1996 F350 7.3l CCLB dually w/ E4OD. 245k miles. Rebuild trans at 183k.

Monday night the truck was running fine, kinda sluggish, but moved ok. Driving at 65, cruising with no problems. Went to press the accelerator and the motor revved up freely. No warnings, no noises, no leaks, anything indicative of the trans going out.

Coasted into a parking lot, had my brother tow me back home on the rain. Never turned off the truck the whole time. Get home and turn off truck. Went to bed. No lights left on, doors open, nothing visibly drawing power.

Well.... the next morning I went to put a scanner on it and the truck wouldnt power up. The moment you turned the key, the whole system went dead. Cab lights and all. So i figured the batteries somehow drained. Maybe a bad cell or something wasnt letting the batteroes charge on the way home and its just dead. Fine. Used my jeep and tractor to jump it off, no change in condition. Went to have both batteroes tested. Both passed well. Figured the system needed to reset so it was good the batteries were disconnected. Got home. Bolted them in, same problems.

What could it possibly be? Im stumped.

 

Besides testing the batteries, Which was a good start, you need to do some diagnosing. None of us can just tell you what the problem is. All we can do is make guesses.
Start checking fuses, battery cables, wires, fusible links.

 

It could be this....




There were some ground wires in there. So remove and clean all ground points you can find.

 

Did the "system go dead" when you turned the key to RUN, or to START?

 

Not sure if it'll help, but you might check to see if the GPR stuck closed. It happened to me a while back, and drained my batteries FAST! I recharged the batteries, and drained, twice before I figured it out. New GPR, and all is well now.

 

System went dead at both postions. But mainly when you turned the key to crank it on. If its in the On positiok to let the GPs warm up, just flipping on the cab light kills the system too.

 

Remove the power to the GPR and see if it drains again.

 

relays? a power supply wire to the distribution damaged and when it gets hot due to power demand it breaks connection? you could start pulling fuses and see if that helps. then you know what to chase down.

 

Since everything is losing power, almost sounds like bad battery connections.
Clean them all.

 

So yeah for some reason a perfectly running truck that aleays started perfect did have dirty terminals and threw me for a loop

Got it to crank on! Let it warm up, checked the trans fluid, it was low. Topped it off and went to see if it would shift after letting the oil run through. Doesnt shift still. Plus OD was flashing. So no reverse or 1-4. Also got code P0500.
😧

 

Need to see what the codes are.

 

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...0500-code.html


has a few items to check on that code

 

I didnt have anymore time to mess with. Bit the bullet and took it to the same shop that rebuilt it. Ill keep you posted on what was wrong.