Service Traction Control, but with a twist

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slowride77

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So I had something weird happen about an hour ago. I scoured the pages, but non of the "service traction control" threads said anything about this.

I was sitting in a parking lot with the engine idling. Probably idling for 10 mins or so. Cold out, like 38 deg.

All of a sudden, all my gauges dropped to zero and then right back up into position and the service traction control message came up on the DIC.

It was there for maybe 3 seconds, went away and the truck just keeping idling like nothing happened. Drove it home fine.

When this happened, the actual traction control light did not come on, just the message. The engine never changed RPM or anything.

Just the gauge cluster uniformly dipping and the message popping up. That was it.

Should I be concerned? I've read the other threads about all the possible issues that it could be.

Just very weird and never saw that before.
 

Onlyone

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That happens to me a few times with different vehicles. It was always a bad battery. It would do that exact thing, then like a month later click, nothing.
 

Onlyone

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Hum…interesting. I’ll take a look at my battery and run some tests on it. Thanks.
Don’t be surprised if it tests good. Just keep an eye on it. Weird things like that, which have several different systems involved are almost always a bad battery.
 
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slowride77

slowride77

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Tested bad in the car when hot and just shut off. Took it out and let it sit over night, then retested it. Tested good. So I bench tested with a load (work light). Bad. The capacity kept dropping every time I load tested. So I’m probably on the edge of a bad cell. Probably going to switch it out and see what happens.
 
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slowride77

slowride77

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Took the battery to the parts store. They load tested and it said good, so i had them test it over and over. Probably 5-6 times. Each time the reserve capacity dropped about 6%. So, what started at 96% dropped to 79% after the last test. Cell going out. Bought a new battery. AGM this time. My old battery only had 610CCA, this one has 760CCA. The loaded LTZ needs the extra juice.

THANKS TO Onlyone for the suggestion. Troubleshooting might have lead me back to the battery, but thanks for the quick suggestion!
 

Geotrash

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Took the battery to the parts store. They load tested and it said good, so i had them test it over and over. Probably 5-6 times. Each time the reserve capacity dropped about 6%. So, what started at 96% dropped to 79% after the last test. Cell going out. Bought a new battery. AGM this time. My old battery only had 610CCA, this one has 760CCA. The loaded LTZ needs the extra juice.

THANKS TO Onlyone for the suggestion. Troubleshooting might have lead me back to the battery, but thanks for the quick suggestion!
Glad you were persistent in your testing!

One thing worth monitoring is that the original alternators on these trucks aren't tuned for the unique charging needs of AGM batteries, and in both of my trucks I had new AGM batteries fail in less than a year. I swapped out the alternators for updated designs and have since had great results with AGM batteries - both trucks are 2+ years on AGM batteries now.

It's possible that it was totally coincidental, but others here have also reported problems with AGM batteries with the original alternators.
 

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