Mutterwirbl

I'm new here and apologize if this in the wrong place on the forum. My battery is only about 3 years old (5 year battery) and yesterday drove all over no issues. Got home and decided to rewire my small trailer. Turned on the egnition a few time to test turn signals/brake lights etc on the trailer. I only did this a few times for a total of maybe 3 minutes all together. Disconnected the trailer and then noticed the cab lights were dim. Wont turn over just clicking from the relay (i assume) hooked up fully charged jump box to the terminals and lights still dim and still will not turn over. Seems that the truck doesn't even notice the jump box is connected. Thouroughly cleaned the terminals reconnected still clicking/no start. Tryed jumping the terminals with screw drive - same thing. Went ahead and disconnected the battery terms overnight hoping this might reset the computer and tried again this morning and with the jump box fully charged again and nothing. Im hesitant to blame the battery at this point because i have used this jump box in the past and it usually fires right up no problem. Any help would be greatly apprciated. Thanks in advance! I will also mention last week i had a low idle issue when truck would die at a stop. It corrected itself ran perfect for about a week and returned for about 20 minutes. Was sitting in a parkinglot and idle was about 400rmps and while sitting and talking on the phone all the sudden it jump back up and stayed around 700rpm's and hasn't happened since. Not sure if this is or could be related. Thanks again.

Red-Ford

Do you have enough water in your battery?

Mutterwirbl

I just checked and level looks good.

Red-Ford

Are the terminal wires good, or are they chewed up and worn?

Do you have an o'reilly around? They'll test your battery for free.

Mutterwirbl

WIRES ARE IN GREAT SHAPE. YES MY NEXT STEP IS TAKING THE BATTERY IN FOR TESTING. I'm PRETTY SURE IT'S WITHIN IT'S WARRENTY AS WELL SO IT SHOULD GET REPLACE FREE IF IT'S BAD i WOULD THINK. I JUST HAVE A FUNNY FEELING IT'S NOT THE BATTERY. I'LL LET YOU KNOW HOW IT COME OUT. THANKS FOR THE HELP!

me1234

Just a heads up when you take the battery in: If the battery tests low, but good, expect them to charge it for you but not for them to replace it. The only reason I mention this is we used to have customers come into Advance Auto all the time with good, but near dead, batteries expecting us to replace them. We would replace them only if our tester registered them as bad, or they if they didn't fully charge after being on our trickle charger overnight.

Hopefully it's a bad battery, it would make for an easy fix. Either way, making sure your battery is in tip top shape is your first step.

mbb

The life of cheap batteries is about 2-3 yrs, try then they fail sudddenly.
You can suck out electrolyte, replace with water, creating a bad cell, and guarantee a replacement any time you want before goes bad out of warranty.


If cheap battteries were reliable i wouldnt do this. But they are cheap crap that fail like clockwoek.

02_Black_On_White

That's a pretty dishonest way of doing it...if the battery's not bad why make it bad so you can get a replacement? PO should be looking for a parasitic drain or a busted ground or something in the charging system. Not ruining a good battery for a replacement.

mbb

Because cheap batteries are a scam, and fail suddenly stranding you

Mutterwirbl

Ok All, Thanks! Turned out to be a bad battery. It was about 3 years old even though it was a "5 year" battery. So thank you for the input. I was just thrown off a vbit cause the jump box connected to the battery did nothing. I probably should have connected the cable directly to the battery cables, bypassing the battery all together to see if it started. In any case, problem solved. However, as I mentioned earlier in my thread I had this intermittent low idle/stall problem and it has returned. Our temp dropped into the freezing range and my truck wants to idle at 400rmp's. last night I started it to warm it up and it stayed running @ 400rmp's. Truck was covered in ice so I let it run for about 15 minutes warming up. When I got back in it was still at 400 rpm's reved it up real good a few times and still 400. The weird part... the second I opened my door to get out, it immediately up'ed my rpms back to 700 (normal) and ran fine for the rest of the night. This has to be an electrical issue. Still no check engine light either. Thoughts? Thanks everyone!