Td5 slow crank

[Fraz]

Hi Guys,

As I am out of the country at the moment, my mate was to pick up my TD5 130 and take it for a pink slip. It has a dual batteries through a ignition sense solenoid.

The engine wont fire. His description:
No power anywhere (lights, fuel pump) without jumper leads.

Using another car and jumpers, the dash lights come up and fuel pump starts up fine. They let the plugs heat up and then went to start but its a very slow crank that winds to a stop. He didnt know if the dash lights faded while cranking.

They put a charger on the main battery and left it for a bit - then tried again. Crank was alot faster but still no fire. They put the charger back on for longer again (read 15 mins.. they had to leave so couldnt try for longer) and now nothing. No dash lights, pump etc.

My thoughts are that the main battery has dropped a cell. Would this cause my aux battery, and the running jump vehicle to almost 'short' through the dead main and cause a slow crank?

Is there something im missing from over here?

They had to leave, its getting late at home and from what I understand, quite cold.

Cheers for your help

[slug_burner]

Sounds a reasonable explanation.

A multimeter should help determine what is going on or disconnect the batteries and jumper another vehicles battery in with some heavy jump leads.

[n plus one]

The amount of time the charger was on is nowhere near enough - overnight would be a minimum to get a meaningful sense of whether the battery will still take charge, or has dropped a cell.

Same with the jump start - if your batteries are dead flat you'll need plenty of engine revs and 5-10 minutes from the donor vehicle (and that's assuming a decent size set of leads).

As to why everything is flat - could be a dead main battery, could be a slow drain, could be an issue with the solenoid, could be your mates aren't operating the solenoid correctly?

Sounds like they were in a hurry, which is never confidence inspiring...

[goingbush]

Td5 wont start under those conditions, you need a fully charged battery in tip tpo condition.

[Fraz]

At this stage I'm going with dropped cell. The aux battery is fully charged. When he had the dash lights on, that tells me that the solenoid had engaged and connected both batteries.

It appears the main is shunting all current.

The batteries are usually on charge with a smart charger anyway. Slow drain is probably what caused this - ill take a look when I get home
Cheers

[Fraz]

FYI suspicions were right. Dropped cell. Main battery replaced by Battery World for $25 fitting cost. Not sure what they put in it, but I can't do much more from overseas.