First post on this new (to me) forum. I mentioned in my intro that I am in the US and I am trying to get help from a forum that would be more used to the diesel 80's than the forums in the US. I am trying to see if I have a connection issue in my B side battery (Driver's side LHD battery). I installed new battery boxes to accommodate group 31 size batteries. Long story short, I wasn't paying attention and temporarily connected a terminal that was too tall and arced my negative terminal on my hood (It actually welded itself to the hood and I had to knock it off with a rod). I am not familiar enough with the 24V system so I wanted to know if I am missing a ground to the chassis. I know the A side battery is grounded and I am sure the B side is factory wired but I am not sure of the grounding with the switching mechanism for the 24V starter.
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Battery Ground Issue
- Thread starter Toadshade
- Start date
Firewout
Well-Known Member
You can download the wiring diagram with the link.
I did look that up and I did not trust myself to look at it properly. I can see that in series the battery is not grounded, but since it did ground out and start, I thought I might not have interpreted it well. I suppose the truck started on 12V possibly. But according to that at least it is not supposed to be grounded. I need to protect that terminal as if it is positive.
Hi TS and welcome. The (US) driver side Left hand battery (from drivers view) should have fully insulated terminals and not be connected to with anything but factory connections. Ever. The reason for this, as you have rightly pointed out is that indeed it does become positive in respect to the vehicle body during starting. At all other times it is linked to the negative of the right hand ( US passenger) side battery in parallel so the vehicle charges the pair at 12V and treats the pair as one. Any connection to the left hand battery becomes 12v to body on its negative and 24v on its positive. This can tend to let the smoke out quite rapidly in the right conditions.
Rich
Rich
Yes this is interesting. I didn’t think that part of the circuit would make the battery terminals 24V. It is obvious now but didn’t occur to me. I assumed that 24 volt connection would be after the battery. The only thing directly connected to that battery are my fog lights. I suppose they have never been ruined because my truck has always been started when I use them. Time to change that right away.
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