Truck dies after starting ,P063D, red lightning bold, check gauges

[Balazar]

Ok, need help troubleshooting. When I start the truck it cranks and then dies a few seconds after starting. After a few starts and giving it some skinny pedal with the start it stays started. The red lightning bold appears and about 5 seconds after starting the check gauges light comes on. I cleaned all cables connected to the battery terminals, terminals themselves, and applied dielectric grease to everything. That seemed to help a little. It was starting on every crank, but two days latter it's just as bed as it ever was. I don't think it's the alternator.

• Battery gauge is pegged to 11.5v
• With cables disconnected passenger side battery reads 12.7v drivers side is 11.5
• AlfaOBD graph for the battery sits at 11.8v and only peaks up to 12v when running higher RPMs for extended time.
• AlfaOBD graph for alternator voltage shows alternator putting out 14.7v occasionally and occasionally spiking to 2800v. Is that detection of arching somewhere?
  
• Fusible link from passenger battery to grid heater relay looks corroded internally. Could other cables be corroded inside their sheathing?

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[bcbender]

May be time for a new set of batteries. The driver's side is below 12v and may have a bad cell, bottom line when a battery goes bad in these parallel setups it will kill the "good one". Always replace as a set and I try to even match date codes when possible.

Try taking it out and charging it but sounds like it may be too late.

 

[Balazar]

May be time for a new set of batteries. The driver's side is below 12v and may have a bad cell, bottom line when a battery goes bad in these parallel setups it will kill the "good one". Always replace as a set and I try to even match date codes when possible.

I agree with this statement, though the batteries are only 10 months old. They are from Costco and have a warranty. I can easily replace the bad one, I don't think they will warranty the one that is still charged up as it should be. What concerns me is that at only 10 months old, something has caused the driver side battery to die prematurely. Or could it just be luck of the draw and that one has a bad cell?

 

[Ozymandias]

It is dead, no matter how old it is.
Replace it and your problems are probably gone.

It is well known that our trucks act very funny with bad batteries.

You may want to check the cross over cable for corrosion and voltage drop.
The alternator charges the passenger side battery - but voltage for the ECM is measured at the driver's side battery.

The cross over cable are available from Geno's as there is a high demand for them...

 

[Balazar]

It is dead, no matter how old it is.
Replace it and your problems are probably gone.

It is well known that our trucks act very funny with bad batteries.

You may want to check the cross over cable for corrosion and voltage drop.
The alternator charges the passenger side battery - but voltage for the ECM is measured at the driver's side battery.

The cross over cable are available from Geno's as there is a high demand for them...

I took the batteries out and charged them. Got them both to 12.6v and put them back in. Still getting the lightning bolt and p063d. Though it is much easier to start now.

I agree, once a battery dips that low in voltage it is permanently damaged and needs to be replaced. I will try to get that done this weekend.

Crossover seems ok. Passenger side battery was 12.61v across the posts. I put the crossover on and went negative post to drivers side crossover terminal and still got 12.61v.

I have a hydraulic crimper and some 4/0 welding cable laying around from a solar project. I could make a crossover. Maybe it would be a good idea to do new terminals. I'm not really sure where to go from here?

 

[Ozymandias]

Have a second person on hand.

Crank the engine, measure positive post passenger to positive post driver.

So you measure the voltage drop.

After charging with a good charger, you should see well above 13 Volts on these batteries, slowly dropping to 12.9 after a 24h period sitting.
12.6V is not a healthy battery.

As a sidenote, battery voltage can guide you in a wrong direction.
Just lately I worked on a car with dual battery's and 24V Starter.
Both of the battery's showed nice 12.8V resting, but as soon as we used the Starter one of them broke down to 5V, and recovered as soon as we stopped cranking.

 

[Tuesdak]

Passenger side battery was 12.61v across the posts. I put the crossover on and went negative post to drivers side crossover terminal and still got 12.61v. With cables disconnected passenger side battery reads 12.7v drivers side is 11.5V

Likely the driver side battery is toast. This is why they have a warranty...

Check voltages disconnected... You already did this and found a problem. Checking connected batteries with everything off won't tell you anything.

Now that you charged the batteries: Load test the batteries disconnected from each other.

Any parts store should have a free battery load test. None of them understand the dual battery system needs to have one battery electrically disconnected from the other to do a test.

To check the cables you want to have the engine running and then check for voltage across the cable. Quick and dirty is the charging voltage the same on the battery terminals with engine running? Small readings like 0.1V matter!

So between positive posts is checking the crossover cable. Then battery ground to engine is checking the ground cable. Low voltage readings across the cable like 0.1V range is what you are looking for.

Battery voltage varies with temperature and how long they have sat separated from each other, loads, and charging. They will hold a surface charge for a few hours. Thus a load test means more than the voltage reading other than "It's dead Jim!" ~2V lower voltage on one battery from a shorted cell.

 

[petersonj]

Agree with @Ozymandias regarding the voltage drop test on the crossover cable, but I would not perform the test until the batteries are replaced. The passenger side battery could be performing so poorly as to not be delivering much current which could result in a passing grade for the voltage drop test on the cross over cable.

A couple of tips when performing the voltage drop test. Do not use the automatic voltage range on the multimeter as it will likely skew your readings. The meter will hunt to find the proper range during engine cranking, thus making it difficult to read. Set the meter to the manual scale of .00 volts and then perform the test.

The outcome of the test should be less than .20 volt drop, ideally less than .10 volt drop.

Test #1 - Perform the first test from positive post to positive post (not the clamp) during engine cranking. Write down the results.

Test #2 - Perform the second test from positive clamp to positive clamp. Write down the results.

Subtract the results of the second test from the results of the first test. This will tell you the electrical condition of the clamps around the posts. There should be less than .02 volts difference.

Example:

Test #1 results - .35 volts

Test #2 results - .34 volts. The difference would be .01 volts. This means the clamp connections are good and the crossover cable needs to be replaced.

Another example:

Test #1 results - .35 volts

Test #2 results - .05 volts. The difference would be .30 volts. In this case one or both connections have failed the test, but the crossover cable has passed the test.

If anyone notices an error in my calculations, please let me know.

Edit: Just thought I should mention that it is necessary to disable the engine from starting when performing the voltage drop test.

- John

 

[Balazar]

Ok, I'm having trouble getting my multimeter to get a good reading while cranking. It won't let me lock it into a range. It wants to auto scale. I'm also afriad of cranking too much with the fuel pump fuse unplugged. I don't want to cause any damage from drying out the injection pump. I replaced the fusible link with a 6 AWG cable temporarily for troubleshooting. That got me up to 14.7v on the passenger side battery with the truck running but still at 11.9v on the driver side. I then replaced the crossover with a section of 4/0 cable. That had no effect on voltage or trouble codes. I got underneath and checked out the ground connections to the engine. They are both in good shape but I cleaned them and put conductive grease on them anyway. That had no effect.

At this point I know that I need a fusible link fror the alternator to the passenger battery, probably one for the grid heater too. I now have a new monster crossover. I'm thinking driver side ground is probably bad then? It appears to be 1/0. I will have to order some more welding cable for that. I'm replacing the batteries tomorrow. one will not go over 12.4v the other sits at 13.4 after charging and after settling it is 12.6. That one may be ok.

Any Ideas other than replacing the ground cable? I think I'm going to have to replace just about every charging system cable. I'm closing in on 250k miles on the clock.

 

[Tuesdak]

Replace the bad battery before it decides to explode on you from the shorted cell.

Driver side ground cable has to be bad. What is the voltage from the driver side negative terminal to the engine block? Engine running charging. and again do this with "good" batteries.

Don't bother doing readings when cranking. Load test the batteries instead. As you see with the charging voltage being different: it's identifying the same cable problem that "cranking" would show.

 

[Blakers]

I believe these common rail trucks rely very heavily on having really good batteries. My 03 was on it's original batteries for 9 years, but towards the end of that period it would act like it was missing at times while idling. You could hear a stumble in the exhaust. I thought it was injectors carboning up from idling most of the day due to my job (tending gas wells - stop at a well for 5 minutes, drive a mile, stop at another well for 5 minutes, etc all day), but after replacing the batteries, the stumbling completely stopped. At higher rpms, there appeared to be no stumbling, but the alternator was putting out more then.

Common rail, computer controlled diesels are nice, but they took away one of the biggest assets of a diesel engine when they came up with these: the ability to run totally independent of any electrical system whatsoever! And their unsurpassed reliability. A diesel would even run underwater as long as it got combustion air.

 

[Balazar]

I appreciate all of the help in this forum. I just want to give a status update. I have more 4/0 cable on order and military type battery lugs. I have fusible links from Geno's for the alternator and grid heater coming as well. I have a hydraulic crimper and I plan on just replacing everything in in the charging/starting circuit. I took both batteries out and put them on the charger. They are now both at a settled voltage of 12.9v. I will still have them load tested. I have doubts about them. Any lead acid battery that goes as low as they did is permanently damaged to some degree.

 

[Balazar]

The first cable that I made today was the driver side battery to ground. As soon as I got it hooked up along with the fusible links, everything was fixed.

It was pretty cold and I didn't have enough daylight to do any more than the ground. I cut the insulation off of the old ground. The strands crimped into the ring terminal that bolts to the engine block were corroded pretty bad. I probably could have just cut the end off and crimped a new one. I think the method that I have chosen for replacing all of these cables will last much longer though.
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I am replacing everything with heavier gauge welding cable with hydraulically crimped tinned copper lugs. The lugs are sealed to the cable insulation with marine heat shrink tubing that has glue. I use about 5" to stiffen it up and prevent kinking at the ends. I then sheath it with PET expandable braided sleeving and add another layer of the glue lined heat shrink to secure it to the ends. It came out looking really nice. I can bundle cables together inside the PET sleeving to tidy things up. I will take more pictures as I get thecables made.
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[Ozymandias]

Perfect

 

[Tuesdak]

I probably could have just cut the end off and crimped a new one.

For curiosity cut the rest of the insulation off the cable and see how far the corrosion goes. Copper stranded wire has a habit of wicking moisture or battery acid up the cable and ruining the entire cable.

 

[Balazar]

The first 10 inches of the cable is all black inside when you splay out the strands. After that it's good copper. Changing the ends out may have fixed the problem for a while, but it's likely that this corrosion would continue. I'm glad I replaced all of the cables.
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