So had a serious problem with our explorer tonight.

its a 2004 xlt sport 4.0 part time 4x4 model

We were driving home in a snow storm, 50 mph winds and drving snow hitting the pass front of the explorer. we were driving about 20 mph (hard to see road) and wife was following me in her rig. I noticed that the blower motor seemed to slow down, and we shut off radio to concentrate. a few min later I looked at dash and all gauges were dead, and blower motor quit. I thought the engine quit but I could still accelerate (with no gauges at all, no lights anything) for about 4 more min. then motor quit. we coasted to side of road and I turned on flashers (they didn't come on). windows would not roll down nothing. If I turn off key and try to start vehicle the only light that comes on dash is the airbag light, after a few min of sitting there out of the blue the cd ejected from the radio a bit and went back in.

we had to leave the vehicle alongside the road in the blizzard and I didn't have much time standing in the wind to look at anything but I did notice the engine bay was covered in snow.


Flash back a few months.... I started remembering a few quirks that this explorer has been doing. We get a lot of drifts of snow across road and when you would hit them and snow would fly around it would seem like for a few seconds the voltage would lower. Also for some reason this past winter if the outside temps would drop below 0 deg F. The explorer would not start. It would click exactly like a dead battery but not turn over. after cycling the key to start over and over and over it would start. above 0 deg did not have this problem.

any ideas, I need to tow this thing in tomorrow after storm breaks if someone or a plow truck doesn't take it out tonight.

thanks

 

Forgot to add, Battery is new, cables are clean and connections are good at battery. No corrosion in cables or at terminals.

tried all keys we have same result

 

Is the battery brand new, or was it replaced shortly before the episode a few months back? It's possible the battery has an intermittent connection internally that opens up when cold.

-Rod

 

i have seen the starters freeze on are plows be fore and it might have got to much snow around the belt and it stop charging ore in the alt

 

alternator died ? Charge battery, start truck, measure output from alternator.

 

Sounds like the alternator died. or its possible (however highly unlikely that snow packed inside the alternator). I would do as steve suggested and charge the battery and check the alternator. alternators are a very common failure on the 4.0.