On Tue, 9 Jan 2018 11:31:53 -0800 (PST), Its Me wrote:

On Tuesday, January 9, 2018 at 1:50:27 PM UTC-5, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/9/2018 1:04 PM, True North wrote:
On Tuesday, 9 January 2018 12:10:34 UTC-4, Keyser Soze wrote:
On 1/9/18 9:58 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/9/2018 9:32 AM, wrote:
On Tue, 09 Jan 2018 09:02:43 -0500, John H
wrote:

On Mon, 8 Jan 2018 18:20:51 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 1/8/2018 5:53 PM, John H wrote:
So I did what Luddite said. Disconnected the pos line, let her sit
a bit, reconnected. Got same
readings with additional ABS code. Remote did the same thing.

Tried remote again...nothing. Tried to start truck with ignition
switch and key...only a few rrr's.
Tried again. Nothing...only a click. I'd just recharged the battery
yesterday, so I'm stumped. Put
charger back on battery. Reading went from 12+ down to 2.4 volts
and stabilized. Left charger on. In
a few minutes the charger was displaying an error code. Tried
jumping with wife's car. Nothing. Got
****ed...almost blew up the f'ing truck.

Went to the Dr for a cough. Came back, thought I'd try the charger
again. This time it started at
13+ volts and stayed there. Soon it displayed 'charged'. Tried the
starter. Truck started right up.

No more 'ctrl-alt-del'. Had me almost calling a tow truck.



John, there's no way disconnecting the battery and reconnecting can do
any harm.

Based on what you did, the charger "error" and the readings, it points
to one thing:

You have a bad battery.* Open cell or cells that are shorted.

Well, I just checked. The batteries are four years old. Maybe it's
time for new ones. Will get them
checked also.


===

Good idea.* Four years is approaching end of useful life and cold
weather will always bring out the worst in batteries.


Especially a diesel in cold weather.* Quite a drain on older batteries
when starting.* Been there, done that.


Wait, wait, wait...this entire thread is the result of a dying battery?
Too ****ing funny.

~~Snerk~~
A battery can lose 40% of it's power when the temperature drops way down to 0 or so. My recommending a battery blanket and block heater would keep the battery's strength up and make the engine easier to turn over. Those southern boys sure are hard headed.



Don, it rarely gets to zero degrees F in Virginia. In fact, it rarely
gets that cold where I am. Might for one night, once in a while, but
not for and extended period of time (like it did for the last week or so).

Yes... that battery blanket can keep your battery from freezing (!?!), but we're not talking about that. This may be a case where the battery has just aged and is on its last legs. A blanket isn't going to help sulfated plates.

The batteries are being load tested. But, I don't think they're bad. I think it was the charger or
the ctrl-alt-delete routine and not giving the truck computer time to restart.

But, I have been wrong before. Sometimes. Well, a couple times. Maybe.