I have a '99 F350 Crewcab PSD 4WD. The past week, I've been having to jump start it every morning-and sometimes even 4-5 hours later. Had one obvious bad battery-so replaced it and still having the problem. Started thinking alternator-but it shows its charging when running, although when starting it up, gauge shows it not charging for a couple minutes, then slowly it comes up. After it warms up, test leads on battery shows 13.5 volts-so it is getting a charge. Had both batteries load tested-they were okay, although the old battery I still have in there was really warm when we pulled it out today (3 hours later after truck ran this morning). Had smoke/steam coming out of cells when we pulled the caps and I've noticed it has a gray spongy looking material in each cell along with the acid. Never seen that before. Local NAPA and CarQuest can't bench test this alternator-don't have the right leads, terminals or something. Ford dealer can't either-says this alternator is not serviceable-can't replace regulator/brushes. They're telling me to bring it in for $150 diagnostic test, and if it's the alternator, that'll be another $284. Anyone else got any ideas? I still don't like the battery being so warm, but NAPA load tested it (if they did it right) and said it was fine.

 

Its your altenator its charging but not regulating ! change it
these altenators have internal voltage regulators
chk with napa see if they have just the internal regulator ,nah thats
alot of work, just change it

Rich





02 F250 4x4 SC 5.4v8 6spd 3.73ls Trueblue/Silver and Chrome Nerfs

"All Levers"

 

Thanks Rich-apparently there were two different alternators available and Ford says the one I have is "non-serviceable". Doesn't make sense, as they had the regulator for the 'other' alternator, but all I can do is fork out the bucks for this one. Napa also carries the same regulator-but don't show a thing for the 110 amp alternator I have.

 

I don't think that it was a good idea to replace only one battery. In the RV world its well known that when you have batteries connected in parallel, they should be the same Manufacturer, age and hopefully, same "batch". Has something to do with the one that has a slightly higher voltage charging up the lower one (when vehicle is not running) , then the first one needs a big charge on the next startup. this puts a stress on the batts. I don't have a PSD, so I'm assuming that you have two 12 Volt batteries in parallel.
good luck,
mike

 

>I don't think that it was a good idea to replace only one
>battery.


It's not.
One battery tends to take the charge.