2008 possible animal damage

[BiggSherm1988]

Started off the first day after covid recovery with a low battery......or so I thought.

I had the bat light on and just figured it was low cause i hadn't driven the vehicle in 6 days and the weather was really really cold. figured it would have just came up by the time I made it to my destination however it did not. then I noticed I left my OBDII scanner plugged in so I choked it up to that being why the bat was dead and i got a jump from a friend. on the way back home I noticed the bat light starting to flicker and then the ABS light came on for about 100ft then goes off. not 10 seconds later the entire electrical system goes dead but the truck runs fine. I have no gauges no lights nothing so I say screw it and I drive home with intermittent lights on the dash. I'm no expert but I now my way around an electrical harness so I figure my first checks need to be for possible shorts or obviously damaged wires. in my area we have a problem with weasels eating an making their homes in car engine bays so I'm assuming that is what happened. I haven't seen any damage yet but i had to go to work so I haven't gotten in a good look.

my main question does any one know where the frame grounds are located or how many there are? it has some rust on it so i figured that could be one of the problems too.

 

[BiggSherm1988]

******UPDATE******

So I did some more investigating after work. I searched for any evidence of an animal eating my wires and found nothing so I moved on to looked into the charging system itself.

I started at the battery and found the volts to be around 11.6, pretty low but the truck did crank over and start with some relay clicks and a turn. once it stated i checked the voltage again and it was 11.4 so I'm 90% positive that my alternator just took a shit. I rechecked all my connections and didn't see any corrosion of broken connections so this just made me think it was definitely my alternator.

If anyone has any other checks I can do to make a concreate assumption if my alternator is bad just let me know.

 

[sgtsandman]

Check the voltage with the engine running. It should be 14.0 to 15.0 volts at the battery terminals. The closer to 14.0 volts the better. The higher it is, the more the alternator is working to charge the battery.

From what I’ve seen, 14.0-14.4 is normal operation.

My 2019 with a bad battery is pumping out 14.6 - 14.8 at the moment once I get it jumped so it will start.

 

[RangerNumber3]

If it's 11.4 volts when the truck is running it's probably the alternator. Replace with a quality one. Cheap replacement alternators can die within a few months. Sometime a bad alternator will damage and old battery. You may be replacing the battery soon too. My two cents.

 

[BiggSherm1988]

Check the voltage with the engine running. It should be 14.0 to 15.0 volts at the battery terminals. The closer to 14.0 volts the better. The higher it is, the more the alternator is working to charge the battery.

From what I’ve seen, 14.0-14.4 is normal operation.

My 2019 with a bad battery is pumping out 14.6 - 14.8 at the moment once I get it jumped so it will start.

Its super low off and running. It was below 12 when running so I'm going to just get a new battery and alternator. The battery is of unknown age so its worth getting a new one. Worse case is I uave an extra for one of my other vehicles. I live in Germany so I'm going through the amazing challenge of finding the parts. But I'm pretty sure I have it solved I'll just need some time to get it sorted.

 

[sgtsandman]

Yep. Sounds like a good plan.

 

[BiggSherm1988]

Update********************

just got done wasting my time replacing the alternator. I found a broken wire in the charging circuit. The 12v(battery volts) red wire at the regulator had a big fat 0volts reading. So after some inspecting I found that it had chaffed through and broke. Basically the moral of the story is don't be lazy just do the wire checks! I still took the opportunity to upgrade to the bigger alternator, replace my belt, tensioner and idler. So I guess if anything I did some preventative maintenance.

 

[fastpakr]

Glad you got it figured out. Nice work!