Never had this happen before

mmfan55

Member
Ford 950: 12v negative ground: battery lights test light bright: voltage on volt meter showed about 11-11.5 volts. NOTHING when I hit starter. No clicking, try to engage starter, NOTHING! ! Got another battery and all is fine. Never had a situation where a not dead battery would not at least click the solenoid. Never can say "seen it all " I guess.
 
Got the same problem with my F150. Left the key on for three days, went to start it nothing. Put charger on it, show fully charged. Hit starter just a grunt. Charger still shows fully charged. Probably cost me a new battery just because I had a senior moment.
 
Same thing happened to my skid loader last year. Shut it off, got back in and not even a click but dash lights came on. Charger didn't do anything. Tested battery, only had 10.6 volts. They told me a cell went bad in battery. That was a first for me too.
 
An unloaded battery can read substantial voltage when it is loaded with even 10 amps it quickly fades to 3 volts and falling. A common issue with voltage is that is load sensitive. Modern volt meters have very high resistance to read circuits that would be affected by placing a resistor in the circuit (the meter) when testing. Take a dead AA battery and test it with the meter. It might show 1.25 volts. Load it with a flash light bulb and it will drop to .3 volts or less. It might take a few minutes, but it will then get back to 1.25 Jim
 
Had that on a garden tractor Tuesday. Battery about 4 years old, always started perfectly, hasn't been started since late fall. Put a 6 amp charger on 4 hours and didn't put anything in it. Hooked a big charger to it a couple of hours and the amp meter never made a move. New batt. and it fired right up. Been a bad couple of months for batterys around here, 2 garden tractors, wifes car and my 2013 truck.
 
Yup, I had that with the power plant battery last summer. I run it monthly. It had been fine. Three weeks later the power went out. Not even a click. I pulled the 886 over to see if I could jump it but it wouldn't do a thing. Pretty soon something smelled hot - it was the alternator on the tractor! It was hot as a firecracker. There must have been plates grounding out or something.

Funny - I just had to have the alternator on that tractor rebuilt this month.
 
Bingo.

It is not uncommon for an electronic battery tester to report good when the battery will not carry a load due to high internal resistance.

Dean
 
(quoted from post at 00:20:08 02/25/17) Bingo.

It is not uncommon for an electronic battery tester to report good when the battery will not carry a load due to high internal resistance.

Dean
ot to mention that most will connect instruments/charger to battery connectors & not the battery posts, so a bad connection will yield the results being discussed, even with a perfect battery.
 
Here in AZ a battery will die with no warning start the car make a stop and it wont start again. You can have a good voltage reading but have very low amps. see it happen many times.
 
I was taught that a fully charged battery should read 12.5 V or more, and a voltage of 11.5 or less is considered "fully discharged"
 
(quoted from post at 14:13:04 02/25/17) I was taught that a fully charged battery should read 12.5 V or more, and a voltage of 11.5 or less is considered "fully discharged"
When you check the voltage are you using the battery post and not the clamp? Check it again at the starter or solenoid.
 
You are correct that a fully charged 12 volt lead acid battery will read 12.5-12.7 and if it reads 11.5 it is totally dead for all practical purposes. Even 12v would be consider too low to do much. This is open circuit voltage,no load and no charge having been applied for some time as that will leave a surface voltage. The surface voltage from charging can be removed by applying a load like turning on the lights for 15 seconds or so to get a correct reading.

As far as voltage while cranking, you normally consider about 10.5 volts being minimum for good action.
 

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