Battery light on October 10, 2011, 02:27:30 am Yahoo Message Number: 125887Have a 2004 LD with V10 and just 12k miles. Battery light on dash stays on constantly. Chassis battery is good. (Just replaced it). House batteries are questionable. Does the battery light staying on just mean that there is an issue with the charging system (alternator) or could it mean that the house batteries could be bad? Thanks in advance for any imput.
Re: Battery light on Reply #1 – October 10, 2011, 07:07:57 am Yahoo Message Number: 125890"Battery light on dash stays on constantly. Chassis battery is good. (Just replaced it). House batteries are questionable. Does the battery light staying on just mean that there is an issue with the charging system (alternator) or could it mean that the house batteries could be bad?" The isolator module under the hood prevents the house batteries from draining the engine battery, so even if the house batteries were bad, they should not affect your engine battery. Most likely you have a charging system problem. Get it to a good garage ASAP, before you ruin that new engine battery.Andy Baird http://www.andybaird.com/travels/
Re: Battery light on Reply #2 – October 10, 2011, 11:19:33 am Yahoo Message Number: 125892If you have access to a voltmeter, check the engine batteries voltage with the engine running. If it is below 13 to low 14 volts the engines alternator is not putting out it's current. You should hook up a smart battery charger until you get it fixed. If you are on the road, you may be able to wire power from your LD generator to the engine battery under the Ford hood, you can use jumper cables between the engine and coach batteries. With luck, your upgraded coach charger puts out more than a few amps. If your coach batteries are bad, you may have overheated and ruined the engines alternator trying to dump a lot of charge into defective batteries.Eddie
Re: Battery light on Reply #3 – October 10, 2011, 02:51:10 pm Yahoo Message Number: 125897Thanks, Andy & Eddie for your replies. We keep our LD at our property in N California. It had been out in the open for about 10 months until we finished our pole barn/garage this past August. We have not yet camped in it since purchasing it about a year ago. Other than a light or two turned on once in a while, the coach batteries have not been challenged. I do take it out on the road, at least once a month to give the chassis a little exercise. The Onan generator is also started up and run while turning on the a/c for a load. The solar panel had been left on while it was outside and kept everything well charged. About 3 months ago when I checked the Trojan batteries, I found the fluid level inside both batteries to be low, with the plates exposed. It took maybe half a gallon of distilled water to bring the cells up to proper level in the two batteries. The engine battery was also a little low. The dash battery light has been on for about the last two months, but has been starting the engine and everything has been running fine until this past weekend when I got back from a drive. Tried starting the engine up again, but the battery was dead. (At least it was kind enough to wait until we were home, before dying. Purchased a new engine battery at Costco hoping that the battery light would be gone once started up. No such luck! I did check the Trojan batteries voltages with one showing 6v, but the other only showing 4v. So I know that I'll have to change the coach batteries ( I think they are the originals) With only 12k miles on the chassis, I didn't think it likely that the alternator would be bad already. I won't be able to check the chassis battery for about 2 weeks, when we go back up to the property. I'll check the voltage, as eddie suggested, with the engine running. If a new alternator is the fix, how difficult a job is it to change it? It looks like some of the air cleaner plastic ducting will have to come off, but other than that, are there any major challenges with the V10? Can the existing alternator be bench tested at an auto parts store? Thanks for your suggestions. Roger
Re: Battery light on Reply #4 – October 10, 2011, 06:43:00 pm Yahoo Message Number: 125899"Can the existing alternator be bench tested at an auto parts store?" Hi Roger, yes this can be bench tested. One othe rthing to try is if you can get to the back of the alternator and see the large red cable coming off of that, I would check voltage while engine is off and then while on and see what you get. 12 volts or so at rest and 14 volts or so running. Whatever you get, after staring should be a few volts higher than at rest. This tells you the alternator is working to some degree. If good here, then I would check the power coming out of the battery isolator, to each bank.. House and Chassis.Any critters been in the engine compartment? I hope not!Ramon
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Topic: Battery light on (Read 4 times)
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