MayerMR

Hey fellas,

It's a been a little while since I've posted, but a new baby in the house really affects free time!

But I was hoping I could beg everyone's pardon and ask for a bit of help; when we had our little one my wife said it was time that I get something newer/safer/bigger and I did go out and pick up a Ram 1500 EcoDiesel. Great truck, I love it. But as you can imagine, the Jeep gets less drive time these days.

So a few weeks ago I went out to take my Jeep on some errands and exercise her a bit and I wasn't too surprised that the battery had died. I popped the hood to charge and some little squirrel had climbed up onto the battery and left some nut shells, etc. I thought "Crap, I hope he didn't chew any wires" but I did a pretty thorough inspection and didn't see anything that looked frayed or anything else amiss. I charged the battery up overnight (smart charger) and the next day the ole girl cranked right up, no problem.

Fast forward a day and I went to take her out again just to ensure I was keeping the battery charged up. No joy. Battery had died again. I was thinking I had a voltage leak so I did some more searching - I had been working on replacing the rear door window seal and had left the handle pull/window switch kind of half-*** connected and screwed in with only two screws. So I finished putting it back together properly to rule out a bad ground/loose connection. I then jumped the Jeep and she started fine and while I was out running errands I also stopped by Advance Auto and had them run a battery and alternator check, both check out just fine.

But at this point I was starting to worry that I do, in fact, have a voltage leak somewhere. I disconnected the battery and parked it. I had to do some traveling for work and it sat like that for about a week before I went back out this weekend and reconnected the battery - started right up no problem. I then drove the Jeep on about an 80 mile round trip on the interstate, no problems whatsover. And then again today (battery was left connected from Sunday - today) I decided to drive the Jeep to work. Jeep started again and I had no problems at all today. That said, one thing I noticed when I was driving today is that the alternator output doesn't appear to be charging up to where it should be. The alternator isn't that old, maybe a year. Autozone Gold alternator. Here is a photo of the gauge. Again I haven't driven it nearly as much as I used to, but I seem to remember the battery gauge being up above the 13v mark when running, something in the 14ish range.

So, I apologize for the long and rambling post, but I've just never had any real problems with my Jeep and I hate that I'm worried about its reliability right now. Frankly, I don't trust that it won't leave me stranded with a dead battery at work or something.

Can anyone offer *any* suggestions/tests/ideas of where I could do some investigating to see if I can't root cause this intermittent (seemingly?) issue with the battery draining?

Thanks very much!

-Matt

Here's a photo of my voltage gauge today, while running: