Truck batteries

[stinkbelly]

What is wrong with my truck batteries? They look like they are leaking. They are about 4 months old. The dark part is wet.

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[RMW]

Alternator Over charging them?

[Bassdeer]

Yea looks like an over charging issue.

[stinkbelly]

Why would an alternator over charge a battery? How do you fix it?

[S-3 Ranch]

Why would an alternator over charge a battery? How do you fix it?

Bad voltage regulator, replace the alternator

[ladrones]

Check the voltage on the alternator. I would make sure the voltage off of the alt is in the range of 12.6-14.7 volts. Over or under would be great indicative of a faulty alt.

[jdg13]

Clean those nasty looking terminals up first. Get a multimeter and read battery voltage. A fully charged 12v battery should read roughly 12.6 to 13 volts. Start truck and read again. If alternator is working correctly it should read 14-14.8 volts. Anything over that and it's sending too much juice to the batteries.

[oktx]

Take it to Autozone they can test both for free.

[S-3 Ranch]

Take it to Autozone they can test both for free.

I wouldn’t trust auto zone, they tested my battery and alternator and said they were good and weren’t

[oktx]

I wouldn’t trust auto zone, they tested my battery and alternator and said they were good and weren’t

Possible, I’ve had good luck with them. At least for that.

[BowPro73]

Get a box of baking soda and mix it up with water and flood the spots where the acid is to neutralize the acid. Let it sit a bit and then hose it out. That acid will eat up some stuff in the long run. Pull the battery and clean it with the soda all around as well, if it's still good.

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[rockyraider]

Clean those nasty looking terminals up first. Get a multimeter and read battery voltage. A fully charged 12v battery should read roughly 12.6 to 13 volts. Start truck and read again. If alternator is working correctly it should read 14-14.8 volts. Anything over that and it's sending too much juice to the batteries.

This is absolutely correct. I went through this a while back with my '07 Cummins. My passenger side battery was getting boiled due to overcharging. Sure enough, I stuck a voltage meter on it and it was overcharging the passenger side battery. The driver side was fine. Check the output from your battery cables on the "primary" battery side. Then check on the piggy backed battery side. My issue was getting a good connection on the passenger side battery. No matter how clean and secure the cables looked, I wasn't getting a good connection. When you don't get a good connection, it fools the computer into thinking that the battery needs more charging, so it jacks the alternator's output way up above what it should be. The problem is that it is actually getting all of the output from the alternator so it will boil and possibly explode your battery over time. I could smell mine bad, really heavy sulfur smell when it would start boiling. I finally got a good tight connection and it dropped the volts immediately to the correct charging output.

[stinkbelly]

Thanks for the input. I will do all of the above this weekend.