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Hi all,

I am a new member hoping I could tap into your technical expertise. I have a 1975 Pinz that we bought about 3 yrs ago. I had not started it for well over a year. I had pulled out the batteries to keep in my garage to occasionally trickle charge. When I reinstalled the batteries I wired incorrectly at first. Now I installed them correctly but it will not crank at all. I ordered a new battery relay in case I fried that. Other thoughts on what I may have damaged by putting battery incorrectly?

Appreciate the ideas.

Thanks,
Brian

Can you hear the starter solenoid clicking?


Mike

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No, I don’t think so. There was one brief click when I first pushed the ignition button but I don’t know where the sound was from. Silent after that. I removed the panel covering the battery switch and everything looked ok there.

I also pulled batteries back out and checked voltage…both looked good.

So, what about other battery functions? Like...do dash lights come on? Headlights? etc.


Mike

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You have two things that play here, voltage and amperage. Typically under 21.5 volts, your Pinz will not start. Usually meaning that you have a bad cell or more in one of the batteries or a short. Cranking amps are what is needed to start the vehicle. The three most power hungry parts on your truck will be the starter motor, the horn and the headlights, simplest test is you honk the horn to see that it's giving a loud strong tone, if it does not honk or sounds extremely sick your batteries are the problem. Same is true with the headlights if at night you turn the headlights on it will give you a nice strong light if they're extremely dim they are another indicator of the battery being bad.

You said you had taken the batteries out of the truck, if you'd store them on the ground that is the worst place possible as the charge will drain and a trickle charger cannot recharge any of the lost power. You need a good charger that can put 10 amps or more back into them at a time .

If you don't own one, an inexpensive voltmeter is a great investment. With the meter attached to the batteries the voltage will drop drastically while doing any one of the test above, and definitely tells you that the batteries are not charged and if they do go back to 24 volts is only a surface charge which is useless.

I apologize for perhaps a little off topic. Although I agree with the rest of the post, this "if you'd store them on the ground that is the worst place possible as the charge will drain" may have been true a long time ago with inferior battery cases but probably does not apply to current battery cases made of plastic that do not leak and can be stored on nearly any surface.

Sorry for delay in response, didn’t get a chance to work on it until the weekend due to busy work week. I went ahead and got 2 new batteries to rule out that factor per suggestion here. I also got new battery relay in and replaced that. No luck. Lights don’t turn on either.

Main battery switch is closed...right?


Mike

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Why did you replace the battery relay? It is only a safety feature in case someone opens the main battery switch while the truck is running, it keeps the circuit closed automatically. That is the only reason it is there. Make sure you have the batteries hooked in series and not parallel.

Yes the battery switch was closed. Will start tracing and testing this coming weekend to see at what point I am losing connection. Maybe my battery switch is toast…will check that next.

Got it cranking now! So hopefully tomorrow will get it started.

That is great! What was the issue?

Yes, please let us know what the problem was

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