Battery or starter?

[LinWI]

Seems like the 2 y.o.battery on my IH 674 diesel is going bad.
After running it quite awhile recently with no problems, now it doesn"t have enough juice to start it. It does try to turn over, just too weak. Doesn"t make sense with this new of a battery. The connections are tight.
When I hooked up my battery booster to jump it, as I turned it over the clamps glowed red and smoked at the terminal connections on both pos and neg, and juice actually seeped out the positive terminal. Why would it do that?
It never would start with the booster, but jumping it from my truck did work fine.
And is this a bad battery, or starter? How do I go about trouble shooting?

 

[36 Coupe]

Hydrometer.

 

[Russ from MN]

If juice leaked out I would suspect a bad connection, take the cables off and clean everything. Take a voltmeter and check the battery (on the posts, not the clamps) it should maintain 10? volts while cranking. If it does then work your way towards the starter until you find the bad connection. If the battery voltage drops below 9 you probably have a bad battery, but you could try charging it, or borrow a known good battery from another piece of equipment. I am not sure about the voltages because some equipment will act different

 

[dpendzic]

I use a resistance load tester and it works well---as I have 28 batteries at last count!!

 

[JimB2]

Hi. if the 674 still has a generator/regular setup on it, I would check the charging current/voltage.

JimB

 

[El Toro]

Use a hydrometer to check the specific gravity in each cell. Should have readings 1.260 or better on all cells on a fully charged battery. If one is at 1.100 you have a dead cell. Hal
Untitled URL Link

 

[retired farmer]

Probably has a short inside. Take it back and get warranty on it if it has any left.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Hook up a battery tester to it, and check voltage drop when starting. also make sure the battery is all the way up, when doing this. If the starter draws the battery down a lot, you could have a bad starter, or lousy ground. Also check the charging system voltage, should be charging 13-14 volts, WOT, after a cold start.

 

[old]

I would have the battery checked and the starter checked. Most places will do that for free. If both check out good then your battery cables maybe bad and you can look at them till the cows come home and not see that they are bad

 

[John B.]

If you have fluid leaking from around the post the battery IS BAD this is not normal. This fluid causes a drain on the battery on the outside surface of the battery constantly draining it. If your connections are glowing red they are loose and have a very, very bad connection.

If your jumper cable clamps are the clamps that were glowing red your starter may be dragging and causing the starting problem.

Since you didn't specify which clamps were glowing is why I covered the battery clamps or your jumper clamps in my post.

You're headed in the right direction.

 

[waltdavies]

Take a sharp knife and clean the terminals down to fresh metal if you hear a crunching sound you know that's your problem.
Walt

 

[Texasmark1]

My number is 10v terminal voltage at 200 amperes.

Course with the starter rolling, 10v with a multimeter works for a quick check. A lot of times problems are not the battery nor the starter but somewhere along the line a sloppy aka corroded connection......like either at the battery terminals or the ground to the frame from the wire or the starter housing.

Mark

 

[36 Coupe]

Sounds like you hooked the booster up reversed polarity if the terminal glowed red.When you used the truck you hooked it up right.

 

[C.R.]

I had troubles with my tractor,finaly ran the new ground cable right to one of the starter bolts,that solved a lot of my problrms

 

[mj]

(quoted from post at 19:38:45 09/18/13) Hook up a battery tester to it, and check voltage drop when starting. also make sure the battery is all the way up, when doing this. If the starter draws the battery down a lot, you could have a bad starter, or lousy ground. Also check the charging system voltage, should be charging 13-14 volts, WOT, after a cold start.

Don't think it needs to be WOT to tell you if it's working or not and I usually don't use WOT until an engine is warmed up a little :shock: BUT - that's just me 8)

 

[Anonymous-0]

(quoted from post at 11:20:00 09/20/13)

(quoted from post at 19:38:45 09/18/13) Hook up a battery tester to it, and check voltage drop when starting. also make sure the battery is all the way up, when doing this. If the starter draws the battery down a lot, you could have a bad starter, or lousy ground. Also check the charging system voltage, should be charging 13-14 volts, WOT, after a cold start.

Don't think it needs to be WOT to tell you if it's working or not and I usually don't use WOT until an engine is warmed up a little :shock: BUT - that's just me 8)

You sir have common sense.