Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm talking about certain groups of people who like to buy, modify and drive certain kinds of cars. What does that have to do with cross burning? Are you averse to different people liking different things? Is there something wrong with that? If so, why?
Last edited by GarageLogic; 12-06-2013 at 08:54 PM..
So if you were me, would you just monitor the situation, and not swap alternators now? I don't mind spending the money if it's necessary, but certainly don't want to fire the parts gun if I don't have to. As it sits tonight I don't have an actual problem that I can see.
I appreciate all the responses from everyone.
Here's the critical part you posted on another thread:
"Walmart has replaced the battery 3 times under warranty in the last 5 years."
and if I'm reading your current posts correctly, then you just got another battery recently. The truck has destroyed 4 batteries in a little over 5 years! I suppose if you're OK with WallyWorld continuously replacing failed batteries under warranty, then you're good to go. Having one battery fail to accept and hold a charge in that time frame would not exceptional, but FOUR batteries showing the identical failure mode clearly says that something is wrong with the electrical system in your truck.
Batteries fail to accept and hold a charge in your truck application due primarily to two possible causes:
1) repeated charge/discharge cycles which exceed the ability of the battery, typically due to not recharging them in service (bad alternator) or allowing them to sit with a self discharge or parasitic draw that runs them dead (bad alternator, electrical system, or leakage path), or
2) charging them with A/C rather than the correct DC. This happens when there's an output diode failure in an alternator. The alternator will test "good" if all the test requires is a maximum output amperage to exceed a certain figure; ie, a 90 amp rated alternator puts out close to 90amps at the rated charge voltage. That, unfortunately, is the only test that 99.999% of the shops will do. They assume that a failed diode will have a parasitic draw when not running that will reveal the failed diode, but that is frequently not the case. Unless the alternator output is specifically tested (an O'scope is the easy way to see the problem) for the quality of the output against a good battery load, you'll not know of the alternator defect.
I've seen this problem repeatedly over the last 45 years in diagnosing automotive charging systems. I've seen new car dealership after dealership on virtually every make of car totally miss this failure area, as well as rebuilders and local electrical shops. I've seen cars with a history of repeatedly eating batteries, perhaps to the point where the alternator can't supply enough power to run the car and overcome the failed battery load ... and the cars get towed back into the dealership time and time again. Only they replace the "failed" battery each time because the alternator tests "good" and they don't understand that there's a reason why the batteries are repeatedly failing. The fix is to replace the causation of the failures, not just the result.
The "wait and see" approach to repairing your truck with the history of repeated battery failures is not gonna' work. By replacing the battery again, you haven't done anything to change the underlying electrical failure in your truck.
Time to either get the alternator properly checked out by a knowledgeable electrical shop or cut to the chase ... the most likely failure point here is the alternator, and you've found a good source at a reasonable price already.
Here's the critical part you posted on another thread:
"Walmart has replaced the battery 3 times under warranty in the last 5 years."
and if I'm reading your current posts correctly, then you just got another battery recently. The truck has destroyed 4 batteries in a little over 5 years! I suppose if you're OK with WallyWorld continuously replacing failed batteries under warranty, then you're good to go. Having one battery fail to accept and hold a charge in that time frame would not exceptional, but FOUR batteries showing the identical failure mode clearly says that something is wrong with the electrical system in your truck.
Batteries fail to accept and hold a charge in your truck application due primarily to two possible causes:
1) repeated charge/discharge cycles which exceed the ability of the battery, typically due to not recharging them in service (bad alternator) or allowing them to sit with a self discharge or parasitic draw that runs them dead (bad alternator, electrical system, or leakage path), or
2) charging them with A/C rather than the correct DC. This happens when there's an output diode failure in an alternator. The alternator will test "good" if all the test requires is a maximum output amperage to exceed a certain figure; ie, a 90 amp rated alternator puts out close to 90amps at the rated charge voltage. That, unfortunately, is the only test that 99.999% of the shops will do. They assume that a failed diode will have a parasitic draw when not running that will reveal the failed diode, but that is frequently not the case. Unless the alternator output is specifically tested (an O'scope is the easy way to see the problem) for the quality of the output against a good battery load, you'll not know of the alternator defect.
I've seen this problem repeatedly over the last 45 years in diagnosing automotive charging systems. I've seen new car dealership after dealership on virtually every make of car totally miss this failure area, as well as rebuilders and local electrical shops. I've seen cars with a history of repeatedly eating batteries, perhaps to the point where the alternator can't supply enough power to run the car and overcome the failed battery load ... and the cars get towed back into the dealership time and time again. Only they replace the "failed" battery each time because the alternator tests "good" and they don't understand that there's a reason why the batteries are repeatedly failing. The fix is to replace the causation of the failures, not just the result.
The "wait and see" approach to repairing your truck with the history of repeated battery failures is not gonna' work. By replacing the battery again, you haven't done anything to change the underlying electrical failure in your truck.
Time to either get the alternator properly checked out by a knowledgeable electrical shop or cut to the chase ... the most likely failure point here is the alternator, and you've found a good source at a reasonable price already.
I pulled my receipts. It's 4 batteries in 7 years. They've averaged a little more than two years each, with the last one going in about 8 months. One major issue is how the truck is driven:
Drive 500-800 miles for work over 2-3 days.
Park for a month or two.
Run errands for 20 miles, with 8 stops.
Park for a month or two.
Run errands for 20 miles, with 8 stops.
Park for a month or two.
Run errands for 20 miles, with 8 stops.
Park for a month or two.
Run errands for 20 miles, with 8 stops.
Park for a month or two.
Repeat.
I just don't drive the truck that much. Usually it still cranks right up after sitting for a while, but over a two year period I may have to jump it or put a charger on it 3-5 times. This last time 2 days on a charger produced no charge at all. Every time I take the battery in they tell me "dead cell" but as can be expected I'm not sure Walmart really knows anything beyond "good" and "bad".
Do chargers go bad? Mine is a ~15 year old Sears, with several ranges, reverse hookup protection, etc. I put it on the new battery overnight on a table in my garage. A DVOM showed 13.5V on the battery right before I installed it, so I wonder why the charger didn't show it being charged. The starter spun faster than I can ever recall. I haven't put a meter on the charger to see what it's doing.
I just don't drive the truck that much. Usually it still cranks right up after sitting for a while, but over a two year period I may have to jump it or put a charger on it 3-5 times. This last time 2 days on a charger produced no charge at all. Every time I take the battery in they tell me "dead cell" but as can be expected I'm not sure Walmart really knows anything beyond "good" and "bad".
A battery that still has enough energy after your short-run driving cycle and then sits for awhile demonstrates that it is in pretty good shape. Typically, a regular cycle automotive battery will only tolerate 6 to 12 times of deep discharge where it cannot crank an engine again before failing, in comparison to a "marine" or "RV" deep cycle battery that is designed to do this (even to a totally dead battery level) in normal service.
What you're telling us is that the batteries you have gone through in the last 7 years have consistently failed with the identical symptom. That's a very short service life in a vehicle that doesn't have an exceptionally difficult load on the battery.
Do chargers go bad? Mine is a ~15 year old Sears, with several ranges, reverse hookup protection, etc. I put it on the new battery overnight on a table in my garage. A DVOM showed 13.5V on the battery right before I installed it, so I wonder why the charger didn't show it being charged. The starter spun faster than I can ever recall. I haven't put a meter on the charger to see what it's doing.
chargers go bad? does a bear shi* in the woods?
Recently, I assisted a friend cleaning out his airplane hangar of several cars he'd been collecting over the last few years (Happy Day ... he'd just bought another plane and needed the hangar space!). Most of the cars hadn't been run for a long time, would barely crank over, and the batteries needed charging. Being in the aviation biz, he had 8 automotive chargers on the shelves ... Sears, Schauer, and a host of other brands, ranging from trickle chargers to 8 amp chargers to the big on-wheels 40 amp w/200+ amp starting boost capacity.
Thinking we'd be smart about getting the cars back on the road, we put all the cars on the chargers and left them for most of a day. We needed the batteries fully charged because the cars were going to be parked in various locations where they wouldn't have access to an electrical outlet/battery charger and the person who'd be moving them next wasn't comfortable using a jumper unit to start the cars.
Not one of the cars would start when we got back to the hangar. Not one battery had taken a charge. I watched one "smart" Sears battery charger ... an almost brand new unit ... cycle all it's little LED's about the charge cycle, but the bottom line was that it wasn't charging at all. So I got the charger from my hangar, just a little 6 amp old MonkeyWards relic, and put it on the first of the cars, and it charged the battery OK. A couple hours later, the car started and the battery held a charge that night to be moved the next day. We borrowed a few other trickle chargers and put them on the rest of the cars overnight. All of the cars have accepted and held a battery charge since, they've been driven away by others as he's sold each of the cars (to help pay for his new toy) ... and you may have noticed that we're in a cold snap here in SE Wyoming, with overnight temps into the mid teens below zero.
Decent quality automotive batteries are a fairly durable item, which is why the consistent battery failures in your truck strongly suggest a charge system failure. I rarely had a battery not last at least 5 years in Colorado service, and that was in a lot of M-B diesels and BMW's that I didn't drive very frequently.
I use my chargers probably a lot more than you'll ever use one, but I've had 5 battery chargers of various makes fail over the last decades. Some of them were just a failed interior wiring connection which I repaired, some of them had diode failures and weren't worth fixing. But unless you've got an ammeter and voltmeter telling you what a charger is doing to a battery, you don't know what it's doing. It gets to be real critical in the latest generations of specialty batteries, such as are used in BMW's ... or the gel cels in aviation use which will be destroyed if charged at the higher voltages of standard automotive chargers (I use a lab spec voltage/amperage regulated power supply to charge these ... at $100, much cheaper than buying the battery manufacturer approved charger).
Last edited by sunsprit; 12-07-2013 at 11:10 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
