Jeep Gladiator electrical gremlins

[bobfriesenhahn]

well hell, you're the vehicle wiring engineer by trade for 30+ years for the Big 3, you tell us lol

I have deep concerns about our collective future when someone with so much experience and skills gleaned from 30 years+ at the big 3 finds a need to come to this forum to find answers.

 

[HighwayTrout]

@HighwayTrout, why do you think I need to replace my main battery again when its 6 months old and it checked out fine on load test and shows 12.7+ volts after being fully charged by a AGM slow trickle battery charger? Also, if you have any comments on why you think the aux battery needs to be the equation, I'd appreciate to hear that as well.

I value everyone's input, but I'm not just gonna blindly follow somebody that says I need to have both batteries replaced in the truck with a main battery that tested well and without a technical explanation on why.

Sooo.
Batteries-
unfortunately new batteries these days and their components have significantly gone down in quality compared to 10-15 years ago. A six month old battery does not surprise me that all of a sudden displays problems. And like was mentioned earlier. Just cause a volt meter is reading “okay” does not indicate a cell or component inside the battery is failing.

-Why replacing batteries without technical explanation.
I will flip that back to you. Why would you remove the aux battery just cause someone on the internet said so?
And from personal experience. I had electrical gremlins with my last Jeep and played the entire gamut of battery mumbo jumbo. After all the bullshit and configurations. Guess what resolved everything? Replacing both batteries with new ones from the dealership. Even after replacing the main battery a few months prior. What your describing was exactly what I went through.

-30 years experience.
Not to discredit your experience or knowledge and I agree you are kinda on the right track. However your training and experience is based off of 50 year old technology. Why on earth would you experiment by removing electrical components on a 60,000+ dollar vehicle and not want to try just replacing the easiest and cheapest thing. A pair of batteries.

Also.
Added benefit is if nothing changes you can come back and say that I’m wrong and feel good about yourself.

 

[mtudb24]

Sooo.
Batteries-
unfortunately new batteries these days and their components have significantly gone down in quality compared to 10-15 years ago. A six month old battery does not surprise me that all of a sudden displays problems. And like was mentioned earlier. Just cause a volt meter is reading “okay” does not indicate a cell or component inside the battery is failing.

-Why replacing batteries without technical explanation.
I will flip that back to you. Why would you remove the aux battery just cause someone on the internet said so?
And from personal experience. I had electrical gremlins with my last Jeep and played the entire gamut of battery mumbo jumbo. After all the bullshit and configurations. Guess what resolved everything? Replacing both batteries with new ones from the dealership. Even after replacing the main battery a few months prior. What your describing was exactly what I went through.

-30 years experience.
Not to discredit your experience or knowledge and I agree you are kinda on the right track. However your training and experience is based off of 50 year old technology. Why on earth would you experiment by removing electrical components on a 60,000+ dollar vehicle and not want to try just replacing the easiest and cheapest thing. A pair of batteries.

Also
Added benefit is if nothing changes you can come back and say that I’m wrong and feel good about yourself.

I'm not here to prove who's right and wrong and get satisfaction. I don't care who's right and wrong. I'll eat crow gladly all day long if I'm wrong and I'm just trying to fix a problem.

What I am understanding from your post is you are you saying that a 6 month old battery that load tested fine on a reputable auto shop's battery tester, not just my voltmeter could be bad?

I'm not saying you are wrong in the current battery quality control and bad batteries off the shelf. My sole issue is If a battery is bad, its bad. If I have a bad cell / battery it just doesn't come back to life on its own after one day of acting up. A battery is good or bad. No middle ground. Maybe that reasoning is wrong? So running from with no aux battery for months with no issues, and then replacing the main battery and running 6-7+ months with no problem leads me to think other factors are at play. Why would my DIC show a voltage of 10.4V and that battery show 12.7V at the terminals? Seems to something else at play?

In my wiring experience, if there is a wiring failure, it fails. Unless you have a chaffed wire that sometimes sees a short to ground during vibration or something,, it fails 100% time. Or a loose ground that can cuase the electrical intermittent fault. I've removed and re-torqued all grounds at the fender and frame rail. But its not a hardware problem like a battery or alternator. Yes, maybe I'm too old in my career to understand this.

The problem I have is the fact that this problem is intermittent. The truck still drives fine as of today, 3+ days later. That wants to me think that there is a glitch somewhere whether its a IBS sensor or something in the PCM or the Can bus connector / software issue that caued that malfunction.

Maybe i should follow your experience of changing both batteries with your gremlins. Sadly that's about another $400 bucks if I do the work myself and $800-900 if I have a shop do the aux replacement since the shop won't warranty my main battery from January that tested fine on the load test.

I'm by no means a battery engineer or a software engineer that knows exactly what this system requires for voltage to all the modules to run properly.

Yeah, I got rid of the aux battery based on many members personal experience's, but sure seems like there are a lot of owners to have removed the aux battery with no ill side affects after the fact.

Thanks for your input. Appreciate it.

 

[bobfriesenhahn]

I'm not here to prove who's right and wrong and get satisfaction. I don't care who's right and wrong. I'll eat crow gladly all day long if I'm wrong and I'm just trying to fix a problem.

What I am understanding from your post is you are you saying that a 6 month old battery that load tested fine on a reputable auto shop's battery tester, not just my voltmeter could be bad?

I'm not saying you are wrong in the current battery quality control and bad batteries off the shelf. My sole issue is If a battery is bad, its bad. If I have a bad cell / battery it just doesn't come back to life on its own after one day of acting up. A battery is good or bad. No middle ground. Maybe that reasoning is wrong? So running from with no aux battery for months with no issues, and then replacing the main battery and running 6-7+ months with no problem leads me to think other factors are at play. Why would my DIC show a voltage of 10.4V and that battery show 12.7V at the terminals? Seems to something else at play?

In my wiring experience, if there is a wiring failure, it fails. Unless you have a chaffed wire that sometimes sees a short to ground during vibration or something,, it fails 100% time. Or a loose ground that can cuase the electrical intermittent fault. I've removed and re-torqued all grounds at the fender and frame rail. But its not a hardware problem like a battery or alternator. Yes, maybe I'm too old in my career to understand this.

The problem I have is the fact that this problem is intermittent. The truck still drives fine as of today, 3+ days later. That wants to me think that there is a glitch somewhere whether its a IBS sensor or something in the PCM or the Can bus connector / software issue that caued that malfunction.

Maybe i should follow your experience of changing both batteries with your gremlins. Sadly that's about another $400 bucks if I do the work myself and $800-900 if I have a shop do the aux replacement since the shop won't warranty my main battery from January that tested fine on the load test.

I'm by no means a battery engineer or a software engineer that knows exactly what this system requires for voltage to all the modules to run properly.

Yeah, I got rid of the aux battery based on many members personal experience's, but sure seems like there are a lot of owners to have removed the aux battery with no ill side affects after the fact.

Thanks for your input. Appreciate it.

It seems that you may have a wiring issue. Perhaps a poor (intermittent high resistance) connection, or even critter issues (mouse chews). This could lead to a reduced reading from the dash since the dash electronics, and other Jeep electronics, draws current while it is on and the damaged wire/connection has increased resistance . Try turning the headlights on/off and see if the dash reading, or the battery reading, changes very much.

 

[mtudb24]

Sooo.
Batteries-
unfortunately new batteries these days and their components have significantly gone down in quality compared to 10-15 years ago. A six month old battery does not surprise me that all of a sudden displays problems. And like was mentioned earlier. Just cause a volt meter is reading “okay” does not indicate a cell or component inside the battery is failing.

-Why replacing batteries without technical explanation.
I will flip that back to you. Why would you remove the aux battery just cause someone on the internet said so?
And from personal experience. I had electrical gremlins with my last Jeep and played the entire gamut of battery mumbo jumbo. After all the bullshit and configurations. Guess what resolved everything? Replacing both batteries with new ones from the dealership. Even after replacing the main battery a few months prior. What your describing was exactly what I went through.

-30 years experience.
Not to discredit your experience or knowledge and I agree you are kinda on the right track. However your training and experience is based off of 50 year old technology. Why on earth would you experiment by removing electrical components on a 60,000+ dollar vehicle and not want to try just replacing the easiest and cheapest thing. A pair of batteries.

Also.
Added benefit is if nothing changes you can come back and say that I’m wrong and feel good about yourself.

@HighwayTrout, I'll give you an update and I think you and i were both right and wrong on the diagnosis. Truck ran perfect from July 7th until Labor day weekend when all symptoms started again. ABS and traction control lights all came on and my voltage dropped at idle from 10.8 to 12.7 to 15.7 volta and higher. The remote start wouldn't work. The Horn wouldn't beep or would sound like a kazoo when locking the doors with the key fob and my headlights would flicker to dim to nothing and then bright again as the voltage increased.

I found there was voltage discrepancy between the cluster and the actual voltage at the battery. Battery would read 12.7 whether the battery cables were connected or not but the cluster showed 10.8 or 11v. So that led to me a voltage drop somewhere in the system.

Re-checked the 5 UEC connector bolts (disconnected them and re-torqued them to spec) but as i checked the 3 positive battery cables on the main battery terminal, i wiggled all 3 of them and they didn't move. I then put a lot of pressure on all 3 and noticed the 3rd terminal closest to the firewall moved 1 or 2 degrees. Once I torqued down that bolt, everything has been fine for the last 7 days. No voltage variations. Driving or at idle is a solid 14 volts. Remote start works. Horn is always loud. Lights don't dim at idle etc

What led me to this was pulling the red boot over the 3 battery cables and there was a burn mark on the rubber boot. It was located over the loose battery cable and obviously a loose battery cable will generate heat and cause voltage issues.

Knock on wood, I finally found the gremlin that caused me so much stress. I had even put the truck back to stock with the halogen lights and removed my tazer setting for LED, but that made no difference in my battery voltage fluctuation issues.

I've since put all my LED's back in, reset my tazer to LED and haven't had a issue since.

As a EE engineer and i understand the issue of what a loose connection can cause, I wouldn't have ever thought a barely loose positive battery terminal would have caused this and still allowed the truck to start and function except for a couple of cluster warnings for ABS and traction control messages and headlamp dimming but drive down the road fine. It never stalled or shut off, just threw a few cluster messages and headlights would flicker really badly.

FYI