Truck won't start

[Dock Rocker]

Now if I can just get my local guy to take it when I order a new one...

They will want it as a core



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[papakb]

There is a 2.5" connector just in front of the shifter that has a large, multi-pin connector in it where the STE/ICE diagnostic set plugs into the vehicle. The pins in the connector are lettered and the S & T pins are just 2 of the pins in that connector. If you jumper them then the truck will crank the engine. The STE/ICE is a "Simplified Test Equipment/ Internal Combustion Engine" test set designed by the military to incorporate everything needed to test a motor vehicle in a single package. It doesn't do anything a good mechanic can't do with normal test equipment, it just puts it all in a nice box. Get into the flow charts in the -20 series manuals and you will find all the proceedures to use the STE/ICE to test your vehicle.

 

[NormB]

Yeah, battery's dead

Well, this has been instructive.

Several back-channel email messages (thanks, all) about batteries, testers, blankets, all led to this:

I called my local NAPA store and was surprised to find the Optima battery WAS in stock. It’s not cheap. But in for a penny, in for a pounding, right? It's the HMMWV (or MV way). I was prepared to pay the $276 plus tax if load testing showed the battery was indeed dead.

I took the battery in this morning and a sales rep, lady name of Garnet, promptly connected a $20 “toaster” 100 (maybe 125 amp) load tester (actually voltage tester only I've learned) to the battery, pushed the button, let go and said the battery’s fine, just needs a charge.

What I saw was: battery read 12.2 volts maybe. Freshly charged (my DVM read 12.47 at home). She pressed the button for about a half second and let go, the voltage dropped under 11 volts, I think, she wouldn’t let me see the meter.

I asked if she could do it again and hold the button down longer. She did, I counted, about one and a half seconds. Voltage dropped a bit more, and she repeated it just needed charging.

I asked her to please do the full ten second load test whereupon she said “well, it says ten seconds, but if I do that the unit will burn up, you can already smell it.”

She rolled her eyes at me, made a dismissive “pfft” sound, turned and put the meter on a shelf. I told her this wasn’t satisfactory, that I was taking the battery to another shop.

I took the battery to another dealer, had it property load tested on a 500 amp carbon pile load tester - temperature compensated - and have the printout to show a freshly charged battery is ONLY holding 255 CCAs but is rated at 750 at 65 degrees.

Which is what I’d expect as, when placed in series with the other battery, it doesn’t work. Likely internally shorted as a few have suggested.

I took the time on my return trip home to stop by and speak with the manager. I've been going there for decades. It was hard enough to get Garnet’s name, the manager wasn’t as forthcoming. While I was attempting to explain to him what happened, I had to admonish her as she insisted on interrupting while the manager and I spoke at the end of the counter.


I’m in a service industry myself. Sometimes the customer is a jerk, they’re not ALWAYS right, but they all deserve to be treated with respect, understanding, to be listened to and not be presented with abrasive commentary (what my old man used to call "lip." As in "don't give me any lip, or I'll bust one.").

None of this was satisfactory. I wouldn’t want an employee of mine to treat a client this way. Someone - like the manager - needs to instruct staff on the correct use of equipment. Also how NOT to be so insulting or condescending or dismissive of patrons who may know at least as much if not more than they do about the tools or equipment they’re selling or using.

Lastly, to get a true measure of a LARGE capacity battery’s functioning under load, industry standard is to use a load equal to half the battery’s CCA rating for ten to fifteen seconds (recommendations do vary). If a shop is in the business of selling batteries, they should be prepared and trained to TEST batteries correctly and have the right equipment. Units like the one the store uses can be had on multiple sites online for $20 to $60 dollars I've learned, and I just blew $250 for one), all with similar operating characteristics and limitations.

By her estimate, my battery was fine, just needed a charge. No Sale.

I sent a summary of this to NAPA corporate. Don't know if it'll do any good. Don't very much care. In the free market of interpersonal economics (what socialists have disparaginly misidentified and labeled as "capitalism" - I don't believe is capital, I believe in PEOPLE, and their ability to decide for themselves what the value of goods and products are without interference from outside government agencies artificially inflating or deflating prices to service one donating lobby, voting block or another), I'll vote with my wallet, and go where I'm treated well. I'm done with NAPA.

Now I wait for the battery. And a couple of heating blankets to protect my investment.

Would I buy Optimas again? Don't know. I've had other batteries, even die-hards die in under a year. Toyota batteries never lasted over two (well, pushed the last one close to 2-1/2 and it started swelling and leaking acid). I've heard good/bad about interstate, Delcos (although one in an HHR Chevy lasted almost 9 years, died a week before we sold it), many others. Seems these days you pays your money and takes your chances. I'll withhold judgment for another year or so and resurrect this as a zombie post if anything changes.

Thanks again for the hints, tips, direction, suggestions (the S-T bypass trick was worth the price of admission).

 

[snowtrac nome]

Well, this has been instructive.

Several back-channel email messages (thanks, all) about batteries, testers, blankets, all led to this:

I called my local NAPA store and was surprised to find the Optima battery WAS in stock. It’s not cheap. But in for a penny, in for a pounding, right? It's the HMMWV (or MV way). I was prepared to pay the $276 plus tax if load testing showed the battery was indeed dead.

I took the battery in this morning and a sales rep, lady name of Garnet, promptly connected a $20 “toaster” 100 (maybe 125 amp) load tester (actually voltage tester only I've learned) to the battery, pushed the button, let go and said the battery’s fine, just needs a charge.

What I saw was: battery read 12.2 volts maybe. Freshly charged (my DVM read 12.47 at home). She pressed the button for about a half second and let go, the voltage dropped under 11 volts, I think, she wouldn’t let me see the meter.

I asked if she could do it again and hold the button down longer. She did, I counted, about one and a half seconds. Voltage dropped a bit more, and she repeated it just needed charging.

I asked her to please do the full ten second load test whereupon she said “well, it says ten seconds, but if I do that the unit will burn up, you can already smell it.”

She rolled her eyes at me, made a dismissive “pfft” sound, turned and put the meter on a shelf. I told her this wasn’t satisfactory, that I was taking the battery to another shop.

I took the battery to another dealer, had it property load tested on a 500 amp carbon pile load tester - temperature compensated - and have the printout to show a freshly charged battery is ONLY holding 255 CCAs but is rated at 750 at 65 degrees.

Which is what I’d expect as, when placed in series with the other battery, it doesn’t work. Likely internally shorted as a few have suggested.

I took the time on my return trip home to stop by and speak with the manager. I've been going there for decades. It was hard enough to get Garnet’s name, the manager wasn’t as forthcoming. While I was attempting to explain to him what happened, I had to admonish her as she insisted on interrupting while the manager and I spoke at the end of the counter.


I’m in a service industry myself. Sometimes the customer is a jerk, they’re not ALWAYS right, but they all deserve to be treated with respect, understanding, to be listened to and not be presented with abrasive commentary (what my old man used to call "lip." As in "don't give me any lip, or I'll bust one.").

None of this was satisfactory. I wouldn’t want an employee of mine to treat a client this way. Someone - like the manager - needs to instruct staff on the correct use of equipment. Also how NOT to be so insulting or condescending or dismissive of patrons who may know at least as much if not more than they do about the tools or equipment they’re selling or using.

Lastly, to get a true measure of a LARGE capacity battery’s functioning under load, industry standard is to use a load equal to half the battery’s CCA rating for ten to fifteen seconds (recommendations do vary). If a shop is in the business of selling batteries, they should be prepared and trained to TEST batteries correctly and have the right equipment. Units like the one the store uses can be had on multiple sites online for $20 to $60 dollars I've learned, and I just blew $250 for one), all with similar operating characteristics and limitations.

By her estimate, my battery was fine, just needed a charge. No Sale.

I sent a summary of this to NAPA corporate. Don't know if it'll do any good. Don't very much care. In the free market of interpersonal economics (what socialists have disparaginly misidentified and labeled as "capitalism" - I don't believe is capital, I believe in PEOPLE, and their ability to decide for themselves what the value of goods and products are without interference from outside government agencies artificially inflating or deflating prices to service one donating lobby, voting block or another), I'll vote with my wallet, and go where I'm treated well. I'm done with NAPA.

Now I wait for the battery. And a couple of heating blankets to protect my investment.

Would I buy Optimas again? Don't know. I've had other batteries, even die-hards die in under a year. Toyota batteries never lasted over two (well, pushed the last one close to 2-1/2 and it started swelling and leaking acid). I've heard good/bad about interstate, Delcos (although one in an HHR Chevy lasted almost 9 years, died a week before we sold it), many others. Seems these days you pays your money and takes your chances. I'll withhold judgment for another year or so and resurrect this as a zombie post if anything changes.

Thanks again for the hints, tips, direction, suggestions (the S-T bypass trick was worth the price of admission).

I've had 2 optima's in my dodge Cummins diesel here in Alaska lasted 15 years I would buy one again I have also installed agm battery's from all manufactures in to our fleet vehicles and likely wont do it again. The death of an agm battery is deep discharge and rapid recharge. Company staff just like the soldiers I served with, cant get it out of their head that if they leave lights on and run the battery dead, they cant just jump start it and go it needs to be recharged properly. if you want a good test of a battery you need to spend good money on a carbon pile load tester or an inductive tester. Lastly its your money I live in the arctic and I wont use a battery blanket. they will cook your battery if left plugged in all night you should leave a battery warmer on a battery for no more than 2 hours your starting system is so over engineered that a battery warmer is really un necessary.

 

[KaiserM109]

Pardon me if I am off-base, I've never even touched an M1038. I'm a bit old-school, my active military days ended in 1970 and my civilian experience on military vehicles is limited to my M109A3 and my M923A1. HOWEVER I am an expert (self-declared) in junkyard-shopping and working on old 4x4s. There has been a lot of crossover, though.

Battery systems are the same the world over. The “clicketa-clicketa, no turn over” happens when the voltage on your batteries is high enough to close the starter relay but cannot sustain that voltage under the load of trying to turn the engine over. It closes the relay, voltage drops, relay opens, voltage rises, and it starts all over. There is a little delay between each step because the coils in the relay retain a little energy. DON’T WHACK IT WITH A HAMMER!

If you happen to own a British car of almost any make and work on it, you probably already know about the problems with grounding through the frame. Many British electrical systems were designed and built by Lucas, The Prince of Darkness. He likes to use the frame and the body for most of the ground connections. A ground connection can look good, but be oxidized between parts that used to make good connections.

TAKE ALL CONNECTIONS APART and brighten them up. Then connect them tightly and paint them; fingernail polish works great! In the 15[SUP]th[/SUP] CEB unit we smeared our battery connectors, AFTER they were cleaned, with axle grease to prevent oxidation.

I recently went through a series of déjà vu where neither my M109 or my M923 would turn over and all the batteries seemed to take a charge. That is a total of 6 batteries and I was afraid ALL of them had gone bad. That didn’t quite seem right. I started trouble shooting with a volt meter and a grandson on the starter switch. I quickly found that on my deuce there was a serious voltage drop on the connection from the batteries to the frame. Cleaned it up and everything worked.

Now to the M923: the connections in the battery box were loose. Cleaning and tightening them solved the problem with NO MONEY SPENT.

Last thought, taking ALL connectors apart and spraying them with contact cleaner (known as tuner cleaner in the days of TVs with knobs). Put the connector together, apart, together several times and you might prevent some real headaches before they start. Sealed military connectors aren't as susceptible to this as civilian connectors.

I hope I saved you some money on batteries; those monsters are ****ed expensive!

I have found that the M923 has had a lot of Kamikaze maintenance which is intended to just get it out of the motor pool and on to the next mission.

 

[juanprado]

If it is a NAPA company owned store you can get traction with Corp Mgmt, If it is an independently owned jobber store, Then you need to seek out the owner who could have been the manager.... NAPA mgmt has very little influence on an independent owner as the relationship is the other way around.

The toasters do work but as you stated, you need to hold the load. Of course they smell, the wires are getting hot creating the load and that is where the nickname for the heating up your toast on the grill comes from. Inept counterman unfortunately exist everywhere......

 

[NormB]

Pardon me if I am off-base, I've never even touched an M1038. I'm a bit old-school, my active military days ended in 1970 and my civilian experience on military vehicles is limited to my M109A3 and my M923A1. HOWEVER I am an expert (self-declared) in junkyard-shopping and working on old 4x4s. There has been a lot of crossover, though.

Battery systems are the same the world over. The “clicketa-clicketa, no turn over” happens when the voltage on your batteries is high enough to close the starter relay but cannot sustain that voltage under the load of trying to turn the engine over. It closes the relay, voltage drops, relay opens, voltage rises, and it starts all over. There is a little delay between each step because the coils in the relay retain a little energy. DON’T WHACK IT WITH A HAMMER!

If you happen to own a British car of almost any make and work on it, you probably already know about the problems with grounding through the frame. Many British electrical systems were designed and built by Lucas, The Prince of Darkness. He likes to use the frame and the body for most of the ground connections. A ground connection can look good, but be oxidized between parts that used to make good connections.

TAKE ALL CONNECTIONS APART and brighten them up. Then connect them tightly and paint them; fingernail polish works great! In the 15[SUP]th[/SUP] CEB unit we smeared our battery connectors, AFTER they were cleaned, with axle grease to prevent oxidation.

I recently went through a series of déjà vu where neither my M109 or my M923 would turn over and all the batteries seemed to take a charge. That is a total of 6 batteries and I was afraid ALL of them had gone bad. That didn’t quite seem right. I started trouble shooting with a volt meter and a grandson on the starter switch. I quickly found that on my deuce there was a serious voltage drop on the connection from the batteries to the frame. Cleaned it up and everything worked.

Now to the M923: the connections in the battery box were loose. Cleaning and tightening them solved the problem with NO MONEY SPENT.

Last thought, taking ALL connectors apart and spraying them with contact cleaner (known as tuner cleaner in the days of TVs with knobs). Put the connector together, apart, together several times and you might prevent some real headaches before they start. Sealed military connectors aren't as susceptible to this as civilian connectors.

I hope I saved you some money on batteries; those monsters are ****ed expensive!

I have found that the M923 has had a lot of Kamikaze maintenance which is intended to just get it out of the motor pool and on to the next mission.

Thanks. Way past all that. Cleaned up contacts last year, and a couple hours this past weekend. Used cleaners, wire brush, good contact all around.

Bad battery when jumped, or replaced, turns over engine. Rest of circuit is fine.

New battery's on its way. Low wattage heaters applied under 35F shouldn't toast batteries and may prolong the life of them, but judging from the N=1 sample anecdotal evidence presented by Snowtrac nome (no disparagement meant), Optima's are about as good as any.

I think I got a fluke. Happens. Look what happened to Elon Musk's most recent launch. Failures happen.

Thanks again.

 

[snowtrac nome]

Yes every one makes an occasional mistake, and I like the agm battery's, but like your military equipment they need to be used and maintained properly or they wont last. Where your battery heater will help is getting max voltage out of your battery, cold weather can de rate a battery severely, but if you have a good battery you don't have to worry about electrolyte freezing. You can see I'm not a big fan of some of the add on's I see added to vehicles to winterize them. Most are a waste of good money for minimal results, the reason that the military uses 24 volt starting systems is because it takes half as much amperage to do the same work. Anyway good luck this wont be the first time I have seen a bad optima and likely wont be my last they are about as good of a battery as you can buy.

 

[NormB]

INteresting data points to share.

At the advice of several here, I blew a few hundred dollars on a carbon pile battery load tester (Solar brand - read through several dozen reviews, looked into Snap-on, Su, and other mfrs three times as expensive new/used), 1000 Amp, selectable voltage/current, yadda yadda.

Fully charged (per charger lights, but DVM showed 12.47V), I couldn’t get the allegedly dead battery to draw more than 150 amps.

Voltage dropped a bit, like down to 11.2V, tried it again and it went to 9.1V, but I couldn’t dial on any more than 100A.

Weird. I thought maybe the tester was broken. Well, I’d already determined this one was toast, so what did a good one look like?

Tried the other battery, could’ve dialed up to the full CCA of 750A, backed down quickly to 375. Battery started out at 13.5V, two tests dropped it to 12.5V.

Interestingly, I’ll need to calibrate the dial on the tester (both my DVMs pocket tester and pricier Fluke model read within a few hundredths of each other, analog meter’s off by about half a volt, but I can see the tester saving me a LOT of time and trouble in future; paying for itself basically. I’ve got a lot of batteries around the house. Cars, trucks, HMMWV, generator, backups for ham radio, lighting, will be installing a few more on the farm for running an inverter/alarm system off wind and solar panels.


New battery arrived today from Amazon. The last couple of these I’ve bought were double-boxed, foam-padded, coulda pushed ‘em off the back end of a C-130 on a touch-and-go and held up to the abuse (but don’t bet against PFC Snuffy destroying it in a cold heartbeat back in the shop).

Don’t have photo editing to cut off my address or I’d post pics (I’m sending along to Optima as an FYI, how Amazon’s shipping their stuff these days), but it was a single layer of plain cardboard wrapped around the battery, the clear clover was pretty broken up but nothing’s cracked, dented or leaking.

Here’s hoping I get a few years’ use out of this/these.

FWIW.

 

[juanprado]

It seems crazy to me that Amazon ships batteries at all. It used to be a hazardous cargo and subject to proper packing so that it could contain any spilled acid in my days running a NAPA warehouse. Very rarely did a battery go out UPS except for dry cell without acid. Was the box marked with black/white diagonal corrosive stickers?

 

[NormB]

Nothing but a UPS label (other side). No other markings/warnings top/bottom/sides.

Seems like Jeffrey “Dr. Evil” Bezos is cutting some corners to make his first Trillion.

 

[desmodromic]

FWIW, I run Yellow Tops in all my humvees and other items that sit more than they move (trailer winches, etc.), and have had no issues. Good luck.