by PToombs » Sun Jan 20, 2013 6:23 pm
When you 1st start the truck, it's normal for the grids to keep heating for several cycles as the engine warms up. It's normal for the volts gauge to drop way down to 10 or so as this is going on. If the battery keeps going dead you may have another problem, either a draw you're not aware of, or it's not charging correctly. Put a volt meter of some kind on the battery and see how many volts it's charging. Then turn on the lights, fan, wipers and such and check it again. If it's not charging a little over 14 volts you need to find the bad part, if it is, you need to find the draw. Easy way to check is to remove the ground terminal from the battery and put a test light between the post and the ground terminal. It may flare and then go out, this is normal. If the light stays on, you have a draw, a light on like the glovebox light, dome light, radio. Or a short in a circuit. The wire to the dome lights runs under the drivers floor mat and wears thru sometimes causing a short.
pete
Just enough power to break everything behind the crankshaft.