I live in Md and we just got hammered with a monster snow storm. Anyway, I had my truck parked in the car port with the heater plugged in and I also use a battery buddy.

Started it up the day after the storm to go out and borrow a snow blower. I had a pretty good sized wall of snow from the snow plows at the end of my driveway.

I drove through it onto the road, with a pretty decent head of steam but no real speed. About 100 yards down the road. I heard a ding and the check gauges light came on. I checked my gauges and the voltmeter was flat dead. All the way to the left on the 8v peg.

I stopped and checked under the hood. I had some snow up around the exhaust area and on top of the shock mount but it did not look like any actually got to the alternator. I checked all the fuses, they were fine.

Went back home, check using a test light if I had voltage coming out of the alternator ( no voltmeter at home) I realize that's no real test.

Anyway, couldn't find anything visually wrong, so I shut it down. Check a few other things, and tried starting it once more, and slowly, gradually it started charging according to he gauge in the dash. It worked fine and seems to read the same it always has for the rest of the weekend.

Anyone know why it would have shut down, and restarted charging like this?
Is this a sign its starting to die? Should I be worried now or just figure it was a glitch and keep running the truck as normal?

 

Belt slipping due to the snow....... I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

It would be nice to check stuff with a voltmeter, but even with 2 good batteries and only operating the truck for a couple mins the guage shouldnt be down around 8v area. Every now and then mine will do that after a cold start just because the grid heaters are on but I have never seen my guage go that low.

It almost sounds like a possibility of a problem with the voltage sense wire to the guage. Without verifying what the actual battery voltage was at the time of the event its going to be hard to check out.

 

I do wish I had a voltmeter to get a real reading, unfortunately I did not. I used a test light to check if I had any voltage on the main terminal on the Alt. It did. What was odd was the gauge went totally dead. Even if the alt died it would show battery voltage which would have been at least 12v for a little while til the engine and accesories killed the batterys.

Thats also why I dont think is was a belt slip issue. Also I heard no squeal or anything. And it did not look like snow got to that part of the engine compartment. Was mostly under air cleaner area, above shock tower.

 

No output from alternator from belt slip and grid heaters on, should be enough to put gauge in trouble. Might have batteries checked separatelly and look carefully at all battery terminals and connections. Weak battery or resistance in wiring could be cause under circumstances.

 

my vote is for intermetant sticking grids, they will suck the volt gauge down it about 20 seconds, next time it acts up use your test light on the grids to see if they are on

 

I had a problem similar to yours stopped charging then after start up it would charge again. This would happen on/off for a couple months, then stopped altogether. Had it rebuilt needed, brushes, slip ring and new diode pack. Not a problem for two years now.

Floyd

 

Thanks for all the responses and ideas. Has been working for the rest of the week now. So I will cross my fingers it was just some snow related glitch. If not i guess I'm looking at an alternator. Seems young to need an alt. though, just turned over 100k, but this truck ahs been rock solid reliable so far so an alt. in 100k is not bad I guess.