Tryed to start my truck today. Batteries stone dead. Tryed boosting-no go. Put the battery charger on it for about 3 hours. Seems to turn over OK, but as soon as you go to start it, the engine light starts flashing really fast, and you can hear a clicking under the hood.

Is this because something is not sensing enough voltage and won't let the truck start? I'm confused.

 

Are there any codes? Here is the DIY on how to read codes.

Let us know if there are any, and what the code numbers are.

Tony

 

The engine light flashing before it starts is not a big deal. Try the key trick to check codes.

 

It would not start with the engine light flashing at all.


BUT...I did figure out why it was flashing.

Left the charger on all night, go to start it and it fires up. Runs for about a minute and dies. Won't re-start (cranks fine, will not fire) and the engine light is flashing again. Great.


Turns out when I was charging the battery I took off the negative battery cable on the left battery (I actually ultimately disconnected both batteries to charge them). When I did, I loosened the nut on on the negative cable terminal, but all the nut on that side of the terminal did was hold on a fairly sizable ground wire. When I loosened the nut I realized it didn't actually loosen the terminal at all, but the nut on the other side of the terminal does, (you'll have to look at the ground terminals on the batteries to see what I mean.) Anyway I forgot to tighten the nut up on the ground wire, and it was intermittently making contact. When it lost contact, the truck died and the check engine light flashes.

So that is why it wouldn't start and the engine light was flashing. I never traced what exactly the ground wire is, but it may have been for the engine ECM.

The check engine light is on, and I'll check the code.

 

Common problem with that year since Dodge thought to insulate PCM from vibration and uses only one ground to battery for ecm.

 

Well, after hours and hours of scouring researching and trouble shooting a came upon this thread. You guys just saved me so much $$$! This is is what makes these threads so valuable. Thanks again!

 

Thanks for the tip on the ground wire. Just finished a major A/V system install, then I got the fast flashing check engine light. Spend a few hours looking for a more "complex" source to the problem - i.e. wire harness tracing for something that I may have done wrong...
I removed the negative battery terminals, cleaned and re-seated. Done. Too simple.

Thanks again.

Norm