arrrg...dead battery!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[justice]

come home from work today, the wife tells me her van (92) wont start. I check it out, the battery is dead. I put the meter on it.....2.25 volts

She has not driven it since Saturday, it has not been giving any trouble starting. I don't see anything that could have been "left on" to run the battery down.

The battery is only a couple of months old. I had to get a new one when the pos terminal on the old one stripped out and could not be tightened any more.

I pulled the battery out and she is going to take it to O'relliys tomorrow and have it checked and replaced if its bad. Which i hope is the case because I really dont want to have to replace another alternator right now.

[LiftedAWDAstro]

Don't you just love getting a message like that?

[justice]

ok, help me out here.

wife is taking the battery to be checked, i'm hoping for a bad battery, since its less than 6 months old i will get a free replacement.

if the battery is not bad, other than the alternator, where do I start looking?

Like i said in the first post, she last drove the van on saturday and says nothing was out of the ordinary, she did not see any issues with any of the guages, and the volt guage usually shows 14 volts when driving. The pos terminal was new (replaced with the battery) neither terminal was corroded.

Is there a way i can use my meter to see if there is something draining the battery when the van is not running?

help me ASV, you are my only hope!

[1Gary]

Take the ground only off the battery.(leave on the positive wire on the battery)By doing that you have interrupted the circuit of the battery.Then run a test light between the ground wire and a ground to the frame.If the test light is on,you have a short somwhere else that is making the ground.Then go to the fuse box and start pulling fuses one at a time.When the test light goes out,you have found the circuit that is shorted out to take a closer look at.

Might just be easier to have the auto parts store test the output of the alt once you get a battery back in it.

[kings-x59]

only two similar experiences I've had are a bad voltage regulator which would come and go on the alternator, which when I pulled it and had it tested at autozone checked out ok. replaced the alternator anyway and and no more problem.
the other was a shorted passenger side electric lock switch which drained my battery while I was traveling for 3 days. After I got a jump, I listened to a symphony locks locking and unlocking randomly all the way home. pulling the fuse solved that problem temporarily, and a new switch solved it permanently.

[justice]

weeeird...i posted a reply and its gone...maybe i hit the wrong button like dufus..

anyway, long story shot..

battery tested, battery replaced, battery installed (almost ruined), van running, alt putting 14.5 volts to the battery at idle.

done

yay

[1Gary]

Not to be a pest,but something killed the battery.

I suggest you still run that test I posted to see if you have something shorting out.

[kings-x59]

weeeird...i posted a reply and its gone...maybe i hit the wrong button like dufus..

anyway, long story shot..

battery tested, battery replaced, battery installed (almost ruined), van running, alt putting 14.5 volts to the battery at idle.

done

yay

I feel better now. I made a post the other day on Gary's winter car thread that disappeared. I thought, hmmm that's strange...coulda sworn I posted a response.

[Lumpy]

I once had the door lock relay klunk out on me. It continually cycled
through lock/unlock till it ran the battery down.

KLINK...KLUNK...KLINK...Klunk...klink...klu...kl...k...k........
"He's dead Jim".


Lump

[justice]

i really suspect that i had a defective battery. I have a power inverter that we use occasionally in the van. The last time we tried to use it, it would go into protect mode as soon as it was plugged in and turned on. Looking back, this only happened after I installed the new battery. I tested the inverter in my other van and it was fine and worked properly.

The instructions that came with the inverter said it would go into protect mode if it was seeing too much power or too little power. Now that battery went from being "OK" to being dead over a short span where it was not even being used. And i did verify that nothing was left on in the van.

With the new battery in, and the alternator confirmed to be putting out proper voltage, then inverter is also working properly again. So i'm thinking the other battery was weak but just had not died until now.

[1Gary]

Cool.Good to hear you figured it out.