Battery's

[Johnboy]

BATTERY'S THE ABBUSED AND FORGOTTEN.
This evening my cousin and I helped a fellow driver continue his journey home after setting on the fuel island for over 8 hours because of bad battery's don't let this be you.
I'm only posting this for the people who are learning how to work on there truck and would like to know some of the warning signs the battery's give you and please feel free to add to the list if need be.

#1- Slow cranking or hard cranking. The first thing I do is check the nuts on the battery's make sure they are tight if they are tight check the cables for corrosion green stuff and clean it off.

#2 Bad smell. If you smell something that smells like rotten eggs around your battery box chances are you have a bad battery. If you smell this once you will not forget the smell.

#3 A swollen battery case, if the casing on the battery is puffed out it won't be long and it will probably go bad if you smell the sulfur smell or rotten eggs how ever your nose works and you see a gas coming from the battery unhook the ground it could be shorted internally and could blow up yes that does happen.

Now this is a matter of personal preference, I personally do not expect to get more than a year of service from battery's I am however pleasantly surprised if I do.
This how I address battery problems I don't fool with it. Battery's are around $110-120 each from what I have found one service call for a jump start just paid for the hole set it's money wasted. As soon as the battery's show a decline in cranking power I replace the hole set. It's your money your decision send it how you will.
Another sign of a bad battery I haven't seen as often but does happen. If for some reasons an ecm or computer starts to throw off the wall codes that lead nowhere and don't make an sense . Use a good battery tester and check the batterys. I'm not talking about the load tester that looks like a cheese grater you buy at harbor freight it won't pinpoint a bad cell or something.
The reason that driver I mentioned first sat there for 8hrs is because he and the truck stop tech didn't check the first step in trouble shooting electric. The source or the battery's in this case. So long story short the driver has a new starter he didn't need and four new battery's that he did.

A side note for your safety the battery's are in my opinion the most dangerous thing on a truck for someone that does not know what that are doing and should not be taken lightly.
Batterys can and will blow up I have seen it many times.