Intermittant No Start

[flagmanruss]

I can't find my earlier posts on this... Every once in a while, the truck would not more than grunt.  I'm only using it intermittently every couple of weeks.  I have a 1.8A solar trickler on the dash into the always on lighter plug. 

The thing is, a hour on charge or a jump will fire it right up.  The batteries don't seem to take much charging to spin it over. 

 

My first thought is dirty connections. We caught a nice warm day yesterday & I cleaned all the battery terminals with wire brushes.  They weren't really bad as I have the treated felt washers under them all.  I did see a spot on one that just looked a bit oxidized.  I found one terminal (Pos on Driver's side)... I backed off the nuts first...  and the terminal seemed to come off easier than the others. Hopefully this is it.  It's been a couple of years since I had the batteries replaced at Sears & I've not had them apart since.  Possible that the best cleaning job wasn't done then.

 

There might be other connections that need service... 

 

I suppose the batteries might be failing though these incidents have happened in warm & cool weather. 

 

To top it all, the LED has failed in my solar trickler...  It's still putting out power, but without a tell-tale...  not convenient to verify correct operation.  I'm looking at replacing it with a bigger solar charger but they seem to require a diode & regulator... 

 

I started it with a 6A charger after an hour, brought it up to the door for me to work on...  cleaned the terminals & ;eft a tiny float charger on overnight.  It started right up this morning & I took it for a ride to charge up.  Passed the test...  but intermittents can do that.

Edited December 23, 2013 by flagmanruss

[diesel4life]

I had to replace my batts 3 years ago in August. I caught a sale on Interstate batteries and the deal was too good to pass on. Last month I had one fail out of the blue. Started fine one day and the next I noticed a pretty severe drag. It failed under a 50 amp load. My truck might sit a day or two here and there during the warm weather but for the most part it gets ran every day. They prorated the battery but would not do anything for me for the other. I went round and round with the store and got them to make a phone call but still got shot down. All I was asking for was for replacement of both batteries at the pro rated price. I thought that was fair, but apparently they didnt. So now I'm running one new battery and one thats 3 yrs and 3 months old.