battery light intermittant after bumping into the ground
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Joined: Nov 2002
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From: Salem (MI)
battery light intermittant after bumping into the ground
So, I was out 4 wheeling my 05 Scab and managed to run into the ground. Well, ok, it was a sand dune. I tore the front air dam loose, and bent the bumper a tad but you have to crawl underneath to see it. And there was sand over the hood, windshield, roof, etc, not to mention covering the engine pretty good. Fortunately my tonneau cover kept the Rhino liner clean. :-)
Didn't notice any other problems, drove around the sand a while more, then drove home (250 miles) the next day. Later that day, I hooked up my boat to check out the lights, and left the ignition on for a while (maybe an hour?) without the engine running. Still no problems.
Day 3, started pulling the boat to the lake, and the battery light came on. It went off after stopping for gas, and was fine for the next 200 miles. Then (minus the boat this time), it came on again. It is pretty intermittent. Sometimes it will come on, but go out when I rev over 2000 rpm. Back on again after it idles down.
I put a meter on it, and it looks like it's not charging... 12.3v give or take. Revving the engine brings it up marginally, but not more than 12.5... Then, after it sits for a while, start it up, and it is up to 14.2v.
I looked for loose connectors (wiggled all the wiring that looked relevant), blew the sand off the motor with compressed air, blew out the alternator (but it didn't really seem to have sand in that part)
I'm wondering if maybe I damaged the battery internally? The little window on the battery is green. I put a charger on it just for grins, but no help.
I'm kind of at a loss on this. Any ideas? Other than staying out of the dunes for a while?
As an aside, my '97 made many dunes trips. The spark plug wells were so full of sand you couldn't get a socket on the plug. It ran fine up to 150,000 miles when I traded it in, so I'm not convinced that it was really the sand or the bump that caused this. (There were a few problems, plug wires, u-joint, idler pulley, tie-rod ends, which may have been exacerbated by the sand, but that's kind of hard to tell)
Thanks
Walt
Didn't notice any other problems, drove around the sand a while more, then drove home (250 miles) the next day. Later that day, I hooked up my boat to check out the lights, and left the ignition on for a while (maybe an hour?) without the engine running. Still no problems.
Day 3, started pulling the boat to the lake, and the battery light came on. It went off after stopping for gas, and was fine for the next 200 miles. Then (minus the boat this time), it came on again. It is pretty intermittent. Sometimes it will come on, but go out when I rev over 2000 rpm. Back on again after it idles down.
I put a meter on it, and it looks like it's not charging... 12.3v give or take. Revving the engine brings it up marginally, but not more than 12.5... Then, after it sits for a while, start it up, and it is up to 14.2v.
I looked for loose connectors (wiggled all the wiring that looked relevant), blew the sand off the motor with compressed air, blew out the alternator (but it didn't really seem to have sand in that part)
I'm wondering if maybe I damaged the battery internally? The little window on the battery is green. I put a charger on it just for grins, but no help.
I'm kind of at a loss on this. Any ideas? Other than staying out of the dunes for a while?
As an aside, my '97 made many dunes trips. The spark plug wells were so full of sand you couldn't get a socket on the plug. It ran fine up to 150,000 miles when I traded it in, so I'm not convinced that it was really the sand or the bump that caused this. (There were a few problems, plug wires, u-joint, idler pulley, tie-rod ends, which may have been exacerbated by the sand, but that's kind of hard to tell)
Thanks
Walt
