Battery dying overnight

[wlthomas]

To all of you with the "battery dying overnight" problem:

Can't guarantee this to be your scenario, but here was mine....note i said WAS mine...i think i fixed it!

About a yr ago, March of 2015 i bought and installed a new AC delco professional battery thinking i had a battery issue. Worked for about a week, then the damn problems started all over again. Got sick of praying everyday the truck would start and finally picked up a trickle charger type of thing and installed it to plug the truck in every night! Ok, acceptable and tolerable solution but still irritating as hell. About a week ago, here is Eastern PA, it got COLD. I go to work in the AM, leave in the PM and truck is DEAD!

ENOUGH i said. I started ONCE again, googling the hell out of my problem and a tiny little post got my attention with a link in it taking me to Edmunds. Someone posted an article about the alternator and how the diodes can go bad and short. the alternator will still charge the battery, but will DRAIN the hell out of it when key is off. NO FUSE pulling will find this problem. I went out on a limb and took a gamble....i put in a new alternator.

Let truck sit overnight...next morning, WORSE. Hmmmmmmm??????

So i had to think some. Put new battery in a yr ago. Since then, numerous times of being dead, jumping, driving, repeat....

Ok, on that thought, i charged the battery. Put on my tester..showed marginal. Took to Advance auto. their tester said to charge and retest. Well, I JUST CHARGED IT! Based on my experience when working at autozone before, this was a bad sign. Took ANOTHER GAMBLE....bought a battery.


Sooo, i now have a new alternator and new battery and my voltage gauge on dash reads better and no more problems.


CHECK alternators folks! and maybe followup with new battery

If anyone wants to reach out to me, my email is [email protected]. Be glad to help where i can as this situation sucked and i know how irritating it can be

 

[MrBalll]

Maybe that will help someone else. Odd that you had to replace the battery again so soon. Guess it just drained it so bad it didn't want to recover.

 

[ABNLT]

This is good information that usually isn't publicized. Glad you came across it for those folks having this issue.

 

[ABNLT]

This is good information that usually isn't publicized. Glad you came across it for those folks having this issue.

 

[08grey]

My dash volt meeter will hit 15 volts time to time I just changed my1.5 year ac Delco battery also. I guess mine is going bad also.

 

[VikingTrad3r]

Thanks for posting this.

 

[drakon543]

Generally speaking a battery can only be completly dead and recharged so many times before it just wont hold a charge any more. This can sometimes be temporarily remedied by crushing up a few over the counter asprins and putting it in the cells if you have a battery with access caps. If you have a gel battery DONT let it die completely or go for long periods without a trickle charger on it (optima yellow and red top style). They can be properly recharged but with a special charger that costs more than the battery. So if you have a recurring dead battery get it figured out before you have to buy a second battery.

 

[Batman21]

I wonder if my alternator is starting to go bad. I recently noticed that every morning when I start the truck to go to work, the clock on the radio is reset as if there was a power disruption. There was no struggle to start, fired right up, but its been doing this for about a week now. any insight on this? could it just be the radio going bad? other then the clock being reset, everything works normal