Electrical Problems

[DisplacedBuckeye]

Thanks Brian.

I'm stopping by a friend's house tonight to borrow his multimeter, so I'll be able to test all of that out. It's not fun dealing with this while my tools are in the mover's warehouse. I'll probably end up parking it until I get my tools unpacked.

Question about your hub. Did you get those messages before your hub went out? I'll get those once in awhile, and it's almost always close to the issue with it losing power, then the messages go away and everything works fine.

 

[Brian Wilson]

I got the tire pressure message first. then the stabilitrack messages came right before my hub was too bad for me to drive. I jacked the car up to check for a bad hub after the stabilitrack message but I didn't try hard enough to move the wheel. these factory 20 inch rims and tires are heavy. I did the push pull test but I didn't use enough force as I'm used to working on small cars with factory small wheels. it was less than a week after the stabilitrack message that my car made a huge grinding sound pulling into a parking lot. This sound repeated every time I made a turn. I also noticed reduced gas mileage. by the time I realized I had a bad hub, it was bad enough I was not comfortable driving it. and I have been working on cars for a living for a very long time. I never had one fail quite like this. I'm not saying yours is bad, but I have a feeling it is. find out which tire is giving you an crazy signal. due to rotating tires, your car might say it's the right rear when it's really the left front. to test you could lower pressure in one tire and check the guages in your dash when you find the crazy tire signal, you should check that hub. and don't be afraid to manhandl that ******.

 

[DisplacedBuckeye]

OK, I appreciate it. I'll check everything out. It might get pushed to after we close on our house and I get setup in my garage.

 

[DisplacedBuckeye]

Ok, dropped the red top from my truck in it and it fired right up. Drove it home with everything off including lights. Battery light on and same message to service the charging system. Looks like a new alternator and cable upgrade when I can get it into a garage. I'll test everything out this weekend when I get some time to be sure.

 

[Brian Wilson]

Remember, the battery is meant to handle quite alot of amp hours are important as long as you aren't running a winch or crazy stereo. don't assume your battery is good because of 10 minutes run time or assume your alternator is bad after 30 minutes of run time. you can easily test each individually

 

[DisplacedBuckeye]

I took a few measurements of the alternator and battery:

Battery (not running): 11.90V
Battery (running): 11.57V
Alternator: 11.83V

I didn't check any of the ground because I'm not supposed to "work on" my car in the parking lot here. Anything specifically I should check?

 

[mizzouguy]

Alternator output is too low. Could still be a bad ground but my money is on voltage regulator and alt needs replaced.

 

[Brian Wilson]

Did you unplug the battery to test the alternator while running?

 

[DisplacedBuckeye]

I'm getting 0.6 ohms testing the ground from the battery to the engine block.

I didn't unplug the battery. I thought that was a bad thing on newer vehicles? Is that OK to do on ours?

 

[mizzouguy]

Pretty sure the truck will die if you unhook the battery while its running...idk.