Ford Wiring/Electrical :: Battery Won't Take A Full Charge
Nov 22, 2005
I have a vehicle I am storing for the winter, but do want to start it up on occasion just to keep it fresh. my question is this. I put a trickle charger on the battery to keep it charged up, its one of those chargers you can leave on indefinitely, once the green light goes on the charger, it goes into maintanance mode. but I've had the charger on for a week now and it seems the battery won't take a full charge. to put the battery charger into maintance mode. is it dangerous to keep charging a battery that won't fully charge up?
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My neighbor's kids truck battery drains from full charge to "no start" in 1-2 days. 1999 Ford F-150 w/ 4.6L engine. He has already.....
1) Replaced the Battery.
2) Replaced the GEM module.
3) Replaced the Turn Signal Relay.
He did all this before I looked at it....
I checked the following....
1) Truck off, doors closed, hood open... Amp meter shows 3.6 amp draw. When 1st hooked up, shows 4.2 amps... after a while drops to 3.6.
2) To isolate the draw, we pulled fuses while checking current draw at battery.
a) Under Dash fuse Panel. (Yes, with door closed) We remove fuse #15 "stop lamp switch, speed control, brake shift interlock, ABS, PCM,GEM, RABS test connector". (Really... couldn't be more stuff?)
b)Under the hood is another fuse box (drivers side). We remove Fuse #103. "Junction Block Battery Feed".
3) Found that if we remove the #15 fuse under the dash with the door opens, all interior lights flash on/off at about 1 second intervals... weird.
4) Again, another weird one... with the fuse #15 removed and door closed, the "ABS" indicator and some other indicators and dash lights are staying partially lit... not fully lit.
5) The only "aftermarket" stuff i can see is a dealer installed trailer brake system. Wiring looks professional and disconnecting it does not remove the amperage drain.
I'm hoping that one of you wizards will give me the "slam dunk"... if this happens, it must be that. Can I be so lucky? And, yes. I have my own '06 F-150 that i absolutely love. 6-cyl., manual trans, stripped down without even power door locks... my kinda technology.
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98 Ford Expedition 4.6L, 198K Miles, New Battery, Alternator replaced, but battery light still on and after a minute charge indicator drop until left indicating zero, temp gauge on top while temperature motor is cold, gas gauge drop, when lights are turned on oil light turn on also check engine both for a few of seconds.
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I've had my C a week and a half and it is doing great, but I wonder if the system is ok. It has never shown the battery at 100%. My Civic would charge all the way quite often.
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Why the battery never charges to full capacity in the battery level indicator on the LCD screen? It never goes over 6 bars out of the 8 bars so it only gets to be 3/4 full.
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Here's whats going on. Battery goes from full charge to dead and back very fast. Assuming its a battery issue I removed the battery and volt metered every cell
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I have posted separately about my 'supposed' dead HV dead battery. The charge was down to one bar and the the system didn't allow ICE to start for recharge. I finally got a reading of a about 207 volts today and when I fiddled with the start button on and off a few time today, the ICE started. After about 15 sec.
It indicated it was pumping juice into the battery. When it finally got up to about 4 bars it turned off. I had to move the car off the tow dolly (it's home for the past week) and did so in electric mode even though there was a Ready on the display the engine never came on. Before maneuvering it around much I tried to get the ICE to start again to recharge the battery, now down to 2 bars.
By pressing the gas in park and neutral, it would start and rev up but never generated any power to the battery. Fiddled around with the power button some on/off/on, etc. until I got the ready light and sometimes it would start charging but only once did it charge to 6 bars and usually stopped as soon as there were 4 bars.
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I don't plug my PiP in often due to the cost of electricity here, but what I have noticed that when it has a full charge, around 13Miles, it will quickly drop down to 7-8, even when not using EV. Meaning, I start up car, turn off EV and the motor gets warm. Engine shuts off and I drive normally using the ICE. Over the course of a few miles, I'd say about 10, that EV range slowly drops down to 7-8 and then maintains itself around there. Pretty much the whole time I would have been using the ICE to maintain ~70MPH on the highway, not climbing, just flat.
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I recently acquired a 2000 Golf GTI 1.8 20v that came with a few preexisting issues, one of which being that the alternator will not charge the battery. I've checked my voltage while running "starting with a full charge" and it slowly but steadily declines from 12.09 to 11.0 over a 2-3 minute time span. On the dash the battery light is on and never turns off and my radio does not work at all "even with a full charge". I have already replaced my alternator, battery, battery cable, and the two relays in the engine compartment. The relays in the engine compartment were causing a "ghost" amp draw but that has been resolved. I do not have a 109 relay as I have read that this could be the culprit, when I examined the "under-dash" panel I found that my panel does not have one. I have also replaced the 30amp fuses in the engine compartment fuse box and cleaned the grounds.
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2005 Ranger XL 2.3L 5 speed 2WD 305,000 miles. Alternator has about 100,000 miles on it.
Battery light came on about 0400 and 50 miles into my daily 90 mile drive to work, made it to work. After the truck cooled down for 3 hours and I got time I checked the battery voltage 12.6VDC and started the engine and the system is charging at 14.2VDC with no battery light on (battery light out when cold). Serpentine belt looks good, dry weather.
Other than alternator nearing end of life and being warm is there anything else that may cause battery light to come on.
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I have an 02 Ranger 4.0 4WD and I have been doing a lot of research to try and figure out why the battery light comes on and off. I was driving the other day down the highway and the battery light came on and voltage gauge dropped. Drive a little further and it goes off, go down hill light comes on, up hill it turns off. (The up and down hill part was probably just a coincidence!) ...
Next day I pulled the alternator and had it tested at O'Reillys and it passed no issues. Yesterday I was driving again the light comes on my way home from the store and stays on for about 3 miles til I got home. Turned my truck off, restarted it later, no light. Today I drove around for a while and about 45 minutes into my driving around the light comes back on and voltage gauge drops and after about a mile it turned off. I stopped by O'Reillys again to have them test the complete charging system and everything passed. On the way home, light comes on again!
So, question is, the battery light was not on when they tested, will that make a difference in the outcome of the tests? I'm guessing not??? Belt looks good, no bad connections that I have found, battery was good...what am I missing? Battery light is still on and voltage low when I start truck after 1.5 hours of being home. Also, I get no magnetism from the alternator when the battery light is on.
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Earlier this year had dead battery after sitting for a week. 5 year old battery so bought new one battery still goes dead randomly (overnight), instead of playing radio for a few minutes after key off, dash displays "system off to conserve power" ran it thru local repair place (ex ford dealer) nothing found. Voltage 14v at 1800 rpm, lights on". STILL goes dead randomly...
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The battery light is on in my dash. To test it I probed the car battery with a multimeter. Car off the battery reads 12.5 volts. With the car running and no headlights on, heater fan off, etc the meter reads 15-15.5volts. When I turn everything electrical I can think of on the meter reads 14-14.5volts. Is this normal or is the second scenario overcharging the battery? What else can I test that may be keeping the battery light on in the dash?
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I have a '97 F250 diesel and the battery light keeps coming on and off. The volt meter shows a good charge. How do I fix this?
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I have a 1999 Ford F150 6 cyl. 4.2, 2 WD with 160,000 miles. Replaced the battery May 2010.
Today battery light came on. Battery gauge did not look like it was discharging. Had battery checked they said it was a little low but OK. Then they continued test and tried to check alternator, test stopped and they said something wrong with alternator most likely.
I took alternator out and had it bench tested. They said it was OK, putting out 98 amp on 95 amp alternator. They said check wires, grounds, harness, connections. Checked connections and wires as much as possible, reinstalled alternator, light still on.
Have not checked fuses yet. Was told to start vehicle, disconnect positive battery cable and if engine continued to run alternator was good, if cut off alternator was bad and to replace. Should I try this and is it true?
What is the part on the fire wall that is between the alternator and the battery that the wire connection runs through? Can it be bench tested/checked?
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My truck has been sitting more lately, which means up to a week without starting and running. Each time this happens I run into a dead battery. And I mean dead. I've charged it full and then used the truck no problem.
We did a test where we unhooked the negative terminal wiring clamp and ran a meter to check for amp draw. We did this by touching the meter leads to the negative post clamp (unhooked) and to the negative post on the battery. It gives a reading of ~1.5 amps. Trying to figure out where the drain might be.
We'll jut pull each fuse to see if we find the electrical area drawing the amps.
2008 F350 V10 CC SB DRW 4x4
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So I get in my X today and she fires right up as usual... Then the battery light started blinking then stayed on... Then I hear a click and all my stock gauges go out my window and lock switches don't work and my radio doesn't work... Battery light stays on and all signals work as do the mirrors and everything else... I turn the truck off then back on it all comes back on.. 15-20 seconds later I hear the click and all the same stuff is off again.... No seemingly applicable fuses are blown... And the behavior is repeatable...
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Really need diagnosing an on going electrical problem I'm having. It's on a 05 X 4x4 V10 with almost 113k miles.
Background : Last summer took a road trip and alternator went out and was replaced. On that trip started seeing problems with my cruise control, when the headlights(HID's) turn on they dim the dash, and hi's cause the speedometer and other gauges to quickly flux and then go back to proper readings.
Everything was "alright" in the sense that the only problems were those stated above. Well tuesday night on my way home from school, I was driving on the surface streets, stopped at a light.....then all of a sudden the battery symbol on the dash flashed and no more than a second later, the car stopped. All dash lights/radio (double din) still on and headlights still on, but couldn't start the X at all.
Was able to wait a bit and once my parents got there it did start and I was able to pull off to the side and diagnose it a little better, dad looked at it and at the moment couldn't really tell what would be wrong. I had him drive it home for me though. It's been starting fine again but I have NO CLUE as to what to look for and really would like to find out what's happening.
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I have a 1998 Ford F-150. It has an issue with starting sometimes. The truck won't start with a fully charged battery but when I hook it up to a charger, the truck starts normally. It was going to get the wheels aligned today and when the mechanic went to drive it off the ramp, it wouldn't start. I told him to put a charger on the battery and it started right up. Without the charger it just cranked over and wouldn't start. It doesn't do this every time I go to start it only occasionally. The mechanic had no idea what the problem was and has never heard of this kind of situation. I'm assuming it is an electrical problem but I'm not an expert with engines. The battery was fully charged at the shop and the battery is a year old.
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I have a 02 f350 v10 with a starting problem. Sometimes it will crank but really slowly almost like the battery is dead, but its not! bench tested the battery and actually just bought another new one. And with the same result. I tested the relay that's on the firewall in between the starter and the battery and it checked out, i also bought a new relay and i want to put it in except I haven't figured out which wire goes to the coil and which one goes to the ignition. the battery and starter poles are marked and easy to follow ..
Also last month I changed the starter but I'm starting to get desperate and i think I'm going to take it off and have it bench tested as well. I'm just really at a loss in which direction to go. The truck on the outside really looks good but living in the northeast the frame and probably most of the outside grounds are toast and I've been renewing or just placing them as I come across them. Before i forget i tried jumping the starter directly from the battery with cables and got the same result. it would crank but too slow to actually turn over.. Sometimes my radio and ignition lights will sometimes come on without the key in the ignition..
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Start out, drive about 20 minutes, get on the Interstate and the battery light comes on 2008 F 150 5.4L 4X4 - 57K miles..... get to my destination, went about 20 miles, turn around to come home, without turning the truck off because of the battery light being on and I notice the charging gauge drifting down to the left, get back on the Interstate and the wipers are slowing down and lights on the dash are dimming.....go around 15 more minutes I lose all lights on dash, wipers, defroster everything, charging gauge is now pegged all the way down to the left and the truck is starting to act up running like crap so I barely make it off the Interstate and call a flatbed, I guess I was about an hour into the trip ..... battery is only about a year old and it started fine that morning and the day before when it was about 12 degrees ...... dealership had the truck, just gave me a call and said they can't find anything ?? ..... never a days problem since I bought it new in late 07' ....
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