ghunt
Full Access Member
My employer has a '97 F800 that we use for local deliveries (16' flatbed, air brakes, powered by a 5.9 Cummins). Since our office only has 4 regular employees I play part-time mechanic.
We use the truck fairly regularly. Last weekend the temps dipped into the single digits overnight a couple times. When I went out to try to start the truck this past Monday, the batteries were dead, and I mean dead dead. The engine would turn over once and then click-click-click. I tried to jump start it off my truck and that didn't work. Our truck driver came in and brought a battery charger (big wheeled unit), we left that hooked up for a few hours and the best we could get out of it was 4 or 5 slow cranks. By the way, our driver said he had been in just before the weekend and had started the truck and had it running. Oh, the truck has three Group 31 batteries in it.
I can't figure out what happened to these batteries- did the cold just completely kill them? We've had the truck for 3 years, I pulled the batteries out today and none of them have a date marked on them that I can find but two have the stickers you're supposed to punch out and the highest year on it is '06 so I'm figuring they're at least 4-5 years old (there's also two of one brand and one of another brand...they may not be the same age, either). Just seems really weird.
We use the truck fairly regularly. Last weekend the temps dipped into the single digits overnight a couple times. When I went out to try to start the truck this past Monday, the batteries were dead, and I mean dead dead. The engine would turn over once and then click-click-click. I tried to jump start it off my truck and that didn't work. Our truck driver came in and brought a battery charger (big wheeled unit), we left that hooked up for a few hours and the best we could get out of it was 4 or 5 slow cranks. By the way, our driver said he had been in just before the weekend and had started the truck and had it running. Oh, the truck has three Group 31 batteries in it.
I can't figure out what happened to these batteries- did the cold just completely kill them? We've had the truck for 3 years, I pulled the batteries out today and none of them have a date marked on them that I can find but two have the stickers you're supposed to punch out and the highest year on it is '06 so I'm figuring they're at least 4-5 years old (there's also two of one brand and one of another brand...they may not be the same age, either). Just seems really weird.
