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ignition problem

73redblaze

1/2 ton status
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Jun 18, 2008
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Aptos ca
so my truck has been running great but the battery keeps going dead. no biggy i just throw the charger on "start" and she fires right up. well i put it on the other day and it fired right up. tryed to start it again about 10 min later and nothing at all. the dome light wont go on, no power at all when i turn the key. so im wondering is there some kind of ignition fuse i cant find? i found 3 fuses ( under the dash) that say Ign but all of them seem good and the others are just wires with plugs, no fuses. is there a reset buttom somwhere under the hood? what am i missing?
 
Have you double checked all of your grounds? Especially the chassis ground, at the back of the block, next to the battery on the radiator support area, etc.? Sounds to me where I would start.
 
fixed it! i have been out side for hours playing with it, throwing the charger on it, checking the grounds, following them inside making sure everythings good. finaly found a loose wire coming through the firewall. thanks for the help
 
what am i missing

A lot actually.
First of all, when the battery starts going dead all the time, its whats called a "sign". Sorta like when you feel a pain and see arterial blood squirting out.....

Unfortunately, you ignored the "sign" so now you have even more to fix.

Start with the basics. Pull off the battery terminal clamps and clean them.
Make sure that the wires on the starter are tight. The truck gets its power from one of them.
There is a fusible link in the wiring harness. This is a piece of wire that is smaller than the rest of the wire in the circuit and has special nonflammable insulation.

In case of an overload, it melts and opens the circuit to prevent a fire.

What has probably happened, is that the alternator has been trying to charge a failing battery and it finally got to the point that the fusible link from the rest of the truck to the terminal on the starter got overloaded by the amount of current that the alternator was trying to pump into a shorted battery and it melted and killed all the power to the truck.
If it did not blow the fusible link from the alternator, then it might have kept the truck running with the battery out of the circuit until you switched it off.
Not sure, I would have to look at the schematic again.

Either way, you are going to have to check the fusible link from the starter solenoid to the rest of the truck.

It will be hooked to the same terminal that the big battery cable is hooked to on the solenoid.
No sure where the link is, but it will be a dark brown wire spliced to a red wire if its original
It MUST be replaced with either a fuse or the same size wire.
If you use bigger wire, your next post will probably have the words "fire" or "burnt up" in it.

See if you can find that link. It might be obviously burned or not. But, if not, you can usually tell by pulling on each end.
Good wire will just stay there, melted wire will let the insulation stretch.

If you don't see anything obvious, grab a voltmeter and post back.
We can talk you through finding the broken circuit.
 
Glad you found it, but now you need to find out why the battery is going dead before worst stuff happens.
 
Glad you found your problem but I will say this, using a battery charger on the "jump" function to start the engine can easily kill an alternator. If you need me to explain how or why I will but i've posted this several other times in other threads and once most recently.
 
Glad you found your problem but I will say this, using a battery charger on the "jump" function to start the engine can easily kill an alternator.

thanks for the heads up! i wont use that feature anymore. ok so now how can i narrow down whats robbing power from my battery? it might just be i need to charge it and run it more often (more than likely) but i may also need a new battery or it may be robbing power somewhere.
 
Have you checked the voltage output from the alternator when the engine is running to make sure it is charging properly? How old is the battery?
 
Have you checked the voltage output from the alternator when the engine is running to make sure it is charging properly? How old is the battery?

no but i will. batterys 6 years old so its over due and i have only been running it once a month or less so im not suprised it bleeds off power.
 
no but i will. batterys 6 years old so its over due and i have only been running it once a month or less so im not suprised it bleeds off power.

Unless you got tons of accessories that stay on after the truck is off, the battery should stay charged enough to start the truck for at least a month or two.

Just measure the current draw when it's off and then start pulling and replacing fuses until the draw is less than 35 mA. The fuse should help you narrow down the power use to what is on those wires.



-Brian
 
most comon problem with electric problems is over thinking them.

start basic.

fuses hand test them.

check grounds and powers.

and our old trucks have a common problem now with the ground tab snapping off the socket for the turn/brake/marker/backup 1156/1157 bulb style.

if these dont fix most then time to start slow and steady. wiring is not a fast easy fix job . but sometimes you get lucky.

i had a friends truck with backfeed problem on turn/park/dash turn indicator bulb cirkit. found ground tab broken off on 1 socket up front. replaced with good used socket from local pick-n-pull as replacement new are basicly junk . fixed it perfectly.

i have seen lots of guys waste hr's on skipping the simple stuff.
 
He said back in post no. 3, but he did not go into detail......
i dont know to many details of what it was, i found a wire coming off the battery back by the firewall that was spliced but one of the wires was sticing out of the twisty cap. i twisted it back together and the radio come on, problem solved. must have happened while i was messing with the battery charger
 

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