So remember back in May when I said I thought the alternator was bad? Turns out that was fine, but my battery was sick. I’d swapped out the starter last weekend but found that the battery itself was boiling itself when hooked up to the truck.
I pulled it out and let it cool down overnight. The next evening I got underneath and re-connected the wiring to the starter to make sure it wasn’t shorting out on itself. This made the engine much happier, after I dropped the battery from the Scout in, it fired right up. I connected the old battery to the tender and let that top off while I was doing some other stuff, and when it measured 13V I put it back in to give it a shot. I got one crank out of it and then it died quickly, which told me it was irreparably sick.
Going on a tip from a Youtube channel I follow, I learned that Costco sells Interstate batteries for $100 less than the auto retail stores. I grabbed one Thursday night and dropped it in the truck. It fired right up with no complaint, and after shutting it down, an hour later the battery and its cables were comfortingly cool to the touch.
I don’t know what happened with the previous battery, but the signs were there months ago when I wasn’t getting much of a crank out of it. I guess there was a parasitic drain on it somewhere, and when I put the starter in one of the wires was shorting out, which cooked the battery to the point where it became a boat anchor. I’m going to watch this new one carefully to make sure it doesn’t get sick like the last one did, because batteries are expensive.
In the meantime, I can tackle a couple of things this weekend: first and foremost is attempting to break the transmission free. This is going to involve running the engine up to temperature, which is fine in any case; another good data log will help me get back to the real job of testing and tuning the EFI system. I dove into the training videos the other night, and realized I have a lot to learn to get this thing running optimally.
Then I’m going to sand and paint the valance panel over the barn doors to finish that project up; even in primer it looks so much better than it did all chewed up.