Truck Battery discharging overnight

[mharrel]

Hoping you guys can help me. Ive got a 2013 class c Coachman on a Ford E450 super duty chassis.

The truck battery, alternator, volt reg have been checked professionally several times this last week at three different battery stores. The battery is dated at 11/17, so it is almost 4 years.

The truck battery will discharge overnight. It will go from the 12.7v to 8.0 or lower over night and the truck will not start in the morning. I have made sure to turn everything in the truck off (radio, cell phone cable, interior lights, key in correct position, etc) and it still does it. I can jump start truck and drive and battery charges ok. I can charge battery back to spec voltage and it will start and run.

While charging yesterday, we noticed a "ticking" sound coming from under the steering wheel area. Could not locate the source of sound. I could hear ticking sound, both if engine was running or off. I tried to pull one fuse at a time to see which circuit would stop the ticking but could not do all the fuses as some were too big for my puller to extract. I disconnected neg terminal and ticking stopped. I have left it disconnected and charged battery. It is holding voltage while disconnected.

So, Im confused. What is drawing down the truck power? This has only started in the last week. Previously, it has been very reliable and worked fine. If I charge the battery and disconnect from truck it will stay charged to spec voltage overnight.

Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[down_home]

I would take it to an Auto Parts store and have it tested with a Carbon Leak Down test! Virtually everyone does it now.
A battery can show 13.4 volts charging or right after charging, and leak down below 11 volts n a short time.
Your post says the battery is dated? 11/14 that is just about 10 years.
The battery in my AMG s now 10+ years old and doing fine but.....
Wife bought a new Interstate, stranded on the side of the road, north of Atlanta in 2018. 2019 the thing failed. Showed 13.5 volts when jump started and run a bit. The Tech did not bother with the Leak Down Test and so down the road it wouldn't start the car.
Weak cells.

[YC_1]

Replace the battery. Even a tiny drain can cause a bad battery to do very strange things.

IF your alternator is charging properly you have a very serious drain to take the battery to 8 volts.

A battery this old should be replaced without hesitation.

Batteries are not purhchased/bought. We merely rent them for a time. They can fail from the shelf or last far beyond what we should expect.

Since your battery has been run down so low many times it is crippled in any case.

Fighting customer resistance to "buy a new battery" over forty plus years diagnosing things, even though I never sold any car batteries, was like pulling teeth without novicane.

With a fire chief with a two month old vehicle kept coming back saying the radios were running his battery down and his "mechanic" said it was the radios running the battery down in just two hours I just gave up. Went to the parts store and bought a new battery for his new vehicle. Gave the vehicle back to him and asked him to see if it solved his issue. Sure enough, problem solved. I did not tell him how it was resolved until he reported back.

My point is, unless you have the equipment to tell me how much current is being drawn I can only use my vast experience to suggest what is the most common problem.

[Gdetrailer]

LittleBill wrote:
instead of guessing, get a meter, tie it inline with a battery lead, and pull fuses till the drain disappears.

Or use a 12V 20W incadescent bulb in series with one of the battery leads..

Pull fuses until bulb quits glowing.

But there is a lot of fuses involved, since it is a E chassis build some fuse panels are Ford OEM and some will be the coach builder aftermarket add ons and locations may be pretty hidden.

2013 F series trucks typically have high current catastrophic fuses near the battery in the engine compartment plus additional fuse panel in the engine compartment for medium current engine/drive train items plus towing related fuses and relays..

Low current fuse panel on F series trucks which handle pretty much all interior and your lighting stuff were relocated to the passenger side kick panel (this kick panel is two pieces and has one piece that will pull away to reveal the fuse panel behind it) which is a departure from earlier trucks which typically had that fuse panel under the dash on the drivers side..

E series chassis may or may not have the same locations depending if it was and incomplete chassis (no cab) and the coach builder could have very well make further modifications and relocations..

[Grit_dog]

And slightly off topic since alternator diodes were mentioned. On Ford Triton motors, a bad diode can / does cause a cam sensor code.
Sounds strange, but true.

[LittleBill]

instead of guessing, get a meter, tie it inline with a battery lead, and pull fuses till the drain disappears.

[DrewE]

If you have heated mirrors, check that the heat switch didn't get turned on unexpectedly. Ideally (and I believe on my RV), they would only heat with the ignition on, but since they're added by the RV maker, it's entirely possible that some could be wired live regardless of the ignition switch state.

[enblethen]

Ticking you hear could be a circuit breaker tripping and resetting.
Charge relay would be in the battery control center if equipped with a complete unit.
From sate T alert manual:
Connect to wiring or circuit that CANNOT be turned off by a switch or
ground fault protector

[Gdetrailer]

Additional thought..

A "self resetting" breaker can cause a "ticking" type of sound as it will break connection on overload then after the breaker cools down will reset back to normal closed automatically. A short on one of those types of breakers can cause a ticking sound but generally it will take a minute or more so the click would be very slow.. Sometimes auto reset breakers would be used for things like headlights where a fuse might not be a good idea since a fuse would leave you stranded in the dark with no headlights.

Charge lines between vehicle and house batteries are a possible application for a auto reset breaker although Ford does use a relay and fuse on charge lines on their trucks, not sure about E series..

[2112]

Does it tick about twice a second? My 2011 F150 did that while the ignition was on but not off. My ticking came from the AC blend door motor trying to find its home location. The nylon gear was shot so the motor constantly ran.

Your ticking may be something different.

[Gdetrailer]

mharrel wrote:
e.nblethen :
thanks for the help.
yes, it's the chasis (truck) battery not the house battery.
no, no electric stairs

is the carbon dioxide monitor able to disconnect from power to check to see if that is problem?

would the "charge relay" be in the fuse box. it looked like there were a bunch of relays in there.

thanks for your ideas.

Carbon monoxide/LP gas monitor should be only connected to the "house" battery, not the chassis battery.

If you are talking "charge relay" as the relay to charge your house batteries while driving, that relay would be mounted in the engine compartment not under the dash.

As far as engine charging goes, no relays involved, alternator is directly connected to the batteries as pretty much a industry standard. The diodes in the alternator prevent the alternator from draining the vehicle battery when engine is off.

What you are looking for is items which may have power all the time regardless of engine on or engine off.

in 2013, very few items are directly turned on/off via the keyswitch. Instead many items use Fords "CAN Bus" which is Fords version of a data network.

Good example of this is the factory stereo in that yr, the main connector to the radio does not have any ignition "switched" 12V power. Instead, the radio is turned on/off through the CAN bus data network, the radio gets data from the CAN Bus that tells it to power up or turn off.

The downside to this setup is all it takes is one broken or shorted wire anywhere on the CAN bus network to create a failure of the entire network which may cause modules using the CAN bus to not turn on or off when they are supposed to.

It is that reason why I mentioned the harness connectors at the rear of your vehicle, water intrusion damage is very real on 2011 and up Ford vehicles. One wouldn't think a little water in a connector that far away could cause things to not work correctly, but it does.

It is also the reason I mentioned checking the connector which is attached to the parking brake assy.. The pins break from the wire in that harness connector causing lots of electrical gremlins.

[Dusty_R]

Sort of a fix.
Get a Battery Disconnect Switch, and put it on the engine battery, open it when engine is not being run.

[mharrel]

e.nblethen :
thanks for the help.
yes, it's the chasis (truck) battery not the house battery.
no, no electric stairs

is the carbon dioxide monitor able to disconnect from power to check to see if that is problem?

would the "charge relay" be in the fuse box. it looked like there were a bunch of relays in there.

thanks for your ideas.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Starting off

Yank the cruise control fuse
Yank the windshield wiper stalk fuse
Yank the main Accessory fuse

[Gdetrailer]

mharrel wrote:
thanks trailrider.
so the fix is to r&r the alternator? or can it be checked while on board?

If it was the alternator, I doubt you would here a ticking sound coming from under the dash.. Diodes generally when they go bad, short or open, ticking sound would not come from that.

Ticking would mean something like a motor running or a relay opening and closing.

2013 Fords often had wiring harness issues, one real bad one is there is a harness on the driver side which has a connector that the pins get damaged from the vibration caused by applying and releasing your parking brake. Ford decided it was a good idea to solidly wire tie one side of the connector directly to the parking brake assy.. The fix to prevent damage to the connector was to remove the wire tie and tie the connector and cable to another wire harness above the brake assy..

One other wiring harness issue has been moisture getting into several of the wire harness connectors at the rear of the vehicle.. On trucks those connectors are above the spare tire..

It will be difficult to isolate where the drain is coming from, so many over the top complex computerized systems and some fuses are in and around the engine compartment along with inside the cabin..