Lee308

This ! ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Lee308

Why is it not at 100 % ?
That 20% could be the difference between starting and not.

Wanted33

Oh good, I didn't know this and have never had a battery problem. Now that I know I can just feel the battery going dead. Crapola......

Spiky

I can't find this level of detail anywhere. Silver calcium is still a lead-acid battery, just different composition. Anybody know where to find composition details of common batteries?

One of the main positives of silver calcium over antimony appears to be a lower self-discharge rate. But it seems like having a fully charged battery would still be beneficial. I was considering an AGM battery next time, but this discussion of non-charging is making me wonder if that is worth it.

Deerhunter4

I tried changing the logic that disables the BMS on the 2015+ models but it didn't work on my 2011. The BMS drives me crazy. Even after a full charge on a new battery and a reset of the BMS I still get the low battery message.

Lee308

I have done a lot of reading on this, and one person said the dealer was able to lower the voltage threshold for the low battery fault.
I it might be worth a phone call to a dealer.

I just looked up the price on one of these "smart" alternators, a reman.... $$$$$

WXman

I have a good friend who is a long time Ford tech at our dealership. I'm going to ask him about this.

WXman

Well my buddy said there's nothing he can "turn off" on this system. So, I bought an adapter off Amazon and downloaded FORScan and I'm going to play around and see what I can find since nobody has ever posted any concrete info on it.

twotoilets

[QUOTE=Rnlcomp;5357800]Guess I may as well post how the system operates to alleviate any questions.

Principles of Operation

Charging System

The PCM-controlled, or Smart Charge charging system determines the optimal voltage setpoint for the charging system and communicates this information to the voltage regulator.

I'd like to thank Rnlcomp for explaining the different systems involved with our truck batteries. Up till now I had believed that the Battery Management System in the BCM controlled the alternator charge rate as well as the load shedding.
The Smart Charge in the ECM is out of reach of ForScan, however ECM modifications are handled with tuners and a couple of recent posters in this forum explained how they had their custom tunes updated to disable Smart Charge. This would be a win because we would have a 1970's style charging sytem with the alternator maintaining a 90%-100% state of charge and we could still have the BMS baby-sitting the battery. No load shedding with a fully charged battery, but some protection when it does starts to fail.

Lee308

[QUOTE=twotoilets;5361450]"their custom tunes updated to disable Smart Charge."
Oh please sir,, more info.
Where can I get this "custom tune"?