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Bad Earth

Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 7:40 am
by Lorry
Hi.
I would like to share an incident that happened to me last week.
I was at the gas station filling up and when it came to start my vehicle, turned the key and the dashboard lights went dead. Tried again and the starter solenoid clicked and then nothing. Thought my 6 year old battery had finally taken the high road. I have duel battery system fitted so I linked the two batteries the starter tried to turn and the lights went dead again, then the battery indicator on the monitor started to do some funky things and then itself stopped registered the main battery.
I lifted the bonnet only to find that the 80 amp fuse feeding the duel battery had blown. Length of cable load on the cable fuse blew. So I removed the spare battery from the back only to realise that the battery terminals are different, point to remember when buying a second battery. Lesson learnt. Cut a long story short and not having a volt meter, turned out once I managed to jump start "Push start" the Hilux I drove to my mech and with his volt meter we checked the charge from the alt, checked the battery under load and it was 100%, when we checked the volts from the battery to the end of the small earth strap going to the main fuse box it only registered 5 volts. We moved the earth strap and the volts back to normal. Replaced the Earth strap and everything is 100% again.

Re: Bad Earth

Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 8:55 am
by CasKru
Thank you for the heads-up.

Something I've learnt when it comes to the electrical side when working on cars... always first check the earthing

Re: Bad Earth

Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 5:09 pm
by ChrisF
Thanks Lorenzo.

YES, the earth wire have caused many a car owner lots of grieve !!!!!!!!!!!!


PS - you CAN buy screw on terminals for your deep cycle battery, thus it looks and works exactly like your normal battery, and is interchangable when needed .... (not that this will help for a bad earth)

Re: Bad Earth

Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2016 9:01 am
by pietpetoors
Thanx Lorenzo. will remember that one. :thumbup: