Well My poor truck is on the fritz. It all started wednesday when I picked it up from my local body shop after having the front bumper and headlight replaced due to an ignorant person who can't look before they put it in reverse. So i come to findout that the new parts are aftermarket junk and upon closer inspection noticed what a horabble fit they were. and proceeded to get in a 2 hour long shouting match witht he insurance adjuster after he finally agreed that it looked like crap and would replace with oem mopar parts. Well that was just the start of the fun!. so I take the truck home and park it, all is ok until the next night I go to hook up my plow. I get it hooked up and start off down the road, when all of a sudden my headlights start to flicker like i was in a 70's disco dance. So i figured no big deal probably just a bad ground. so i keep on trucking and another couple miles and my speedometer suddenly says i am going 110mph wow! now the lights flicker constantly and the speedo bounces around like crazy. I got home and took the plow off and still the same thing so i know it is not the plow. I then popped the hood for some investigative measures and noticed that the drivers side battery cable end where it bolts to the battery was totally scorched like it had seen shorted out on some thing. So here is my opinion the body man took the drivers fender off to repair it and upon bolting it back on he never thought about disconnecting the other battery and the cable fell down and shorted on the frame/grounded portion of the truck, intern frying something in the system. I checked all ground and cleaned and tightened them so that"s out of the question. I placed a voltmeter on the batteries and it seemed to bounce alot between 12.58 up to 14.30 volts. Any i deas's on what could have happened? Did my truck get damaged even more in the shop?? what is wrong with my poor baby?? I am so sick of dealing with this insurance. This has been the wreck from hell! I will be visiting the shop tomorrow morning bright and early to dicuss my new issue. Thanks to all for reading my long post sorry!

 

I would raise haties about the junk parts. Thats such a scam these days. they probably charged the insurance co for mopar parts as well. Was the shop of your chosing? legally you can go where you like. I would force them to correct all the new issues as well. If they shorted out something it might have fried some pricy stuff. 14.3 v sounds right for a good charging system output, when it drops down to 12vs is odd. A fully charged 12v battery should have I think 13.2 volts or so with an voltmeter. Dont give up and dont go postal on us.

 

Don't worry i am totally sane ha ha! I raised major stink about the junk parts and i finally ended up with my original mopars being put on. The problem was the guy who hit me's insurance would only pay for the junk ones because they were supposed to come with a lifetime warranty through american family insurance company. Blah Blah Blah about there warranty i finally covinced the adjuster that i don't care for there gimmik and i demanded mopar on my truck or he was gonna be on the nightly news for being a scam artist. thats when he finally broke and said fine. Amazing the power of publicity! now if only my truck will quit lying to me and telling me i am going a 110mph and flashing it's lights constantly.

 

Would a fried regulator in the alternator do something like this? .. or would it even charge at all?

 

Sounds like the short fried some circuits in your computer, they dont like major shorts. You need to take pictures and maybe someone in your area has an OBD scan tool to check out the computer....

 

try this. replace the fuse in the circuit in question. a fuse that looks good and checks good with a meter isn't always good, and performs differently under a load. and it only costs a quarter to try it.

 

well the shop is now trying to claim it is the headlight switch and i have tried to explain that it wouldn't cause a variable voltage at the batteries and that my cigarette lighter jack with my cell charger in it has a variable output causeing the light on the charger to flicker also. best part is he wanted to charge me for the switch i told him to put the truck back together. i am now off to the dealership so they can put the obd scan computer on it and check my system out. Just when you think it gets bad it get's worse. i really don't want to dump $430 dollars for a pcm because some moron can't disconnect a battery before performing work. Thanks for all the input i am kinda leaning toward the fried voltage regulator in the pcm but we will see what the magic box says. till the next up date