batteries

[The Mad Bishop]

Good morning everyone, hope you all had a good weekend. Ravens to kick Jets but tonight.
I am having a problem with my truck this morning.
I turn the key and wait for the wait to start light to go out. As it is going out I hear a clicking noise coming from thr engine up close to the firewall. I start the truck and thr clicking continues snd thr battery indicator is bounceing with each click until it has redlined and the clicking stops. Can anyone tell me what is going on, Thanks

 

[argve]

what you are seeing is the after glow cycle of the glow plugs....

Here is how the system works....

You turn on the key and power is applied through a solenoid to the glow plugs. Well the glow plugs will pull more amps than the battery and dinky little wire can deliver but it will show on your volt gauge that the voltage is down. Then after the glow plug controller senses that the plugs are hot it will turn off the wait to start light.

Then while it's waiting for you to get the truck running it will turn the glow plugs on and off (this is called the after glow cycle) to keep the cylinder pre combustion chamber hot enough for the diesel to burn. then after a period of time (we dont' know how long this is and really don't need to know) it will stop cycling the glow plugs. During the time that the glow plug controller is in it's after glow cycle you will see the voltage gauge dip adn the lights will dim as well.

In theory you have (8) 1ohm resistors in parallel which means that in laymens terms it's a dead short.... so the amperage will be some where in the 100's of amps range adn I mean multiple of hundreds range but the wires nor the batteries can supply this amount of current so it sucks the voltage down trying to supply the circuit.

so again... there is nothing wrong with your system - if the wait to start light comes on and goes out pretty darn quick then you have a problem and need to check the system for trouble. but by the sounds of what you describe your system is in A1 shape.

 

[The Mad Bishop]

Not sure if I was clear. The Voltage indicator id stuck at 18, all the way to the right. It would seam to me that if I run it there it would cook my batteries. Also the red Battier indicator light comes on and stays on. Something is deffantly going on.

 

[subway]

sounds like you need to replace the alternator, or the internal voltage regulator at the least. 18 volts is way to much and will burn things out. there should only be a maximum of 14.5 volts output on the alternator.

the high voltage might be causing other things to go wonky and cause secondary problem, you need to fix the alternator first.

 

[RLDSL]

Did you try re starting to see if the gauge was just sticking. It's not uncommon if the batts are low for the gauge to go all the way up to 18 for a short period of time after starting while the batts are filling back up from the drain of runnint the plugs and the starter( and with all the crap I have on my rig that triggers automatically when the engine key is in the on position, like electric air compressor, fuel pump etc there's a heavy draw at startup ), but it's only a worry if it won't settle back down into the normal just under15v range for cruising.

 

[icanfixall]

Well... If you have a voltage regulater thats not internal I would be replacing that very soon. Otherwise the batteries are goung to revolt on you.. The voltage regulaters are cheap too. What travis is posting is true to about the glow plugs and afterglow but... Why are you red lining the motor right after you start it up..... That will ruin a good motor faster that a chicken on the plains of india during a famon....

 

[MIDNIGHT RIDER]

I would do a little trouble-shooting with a volt-meter before I went to throwing parts at it.

See what the batteries show with engine OFF; then, fire up the engine and test voltage with the engine running.

That clicking you are hearing could very well be the glow-plug thermostat gone bad and messing with the glow-plug relay.

 

[Agnem]

Did you ever get a resolution to this ? What did you find?