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 Husband Spoiler
Posts: 4151
  
Location: North Dakota | I am not on any truck forums and thought there may be some people here that could help me out so I thought I would ask....
Ok so I have a questions for the truck people out there. I have a 04.5 Dodge 3500. We just added 60 horsepower to her using a DiabloSport Predator. I am pretty sure that has nothing to do with anything but just thought I would give some back info just in case...lol. I added the hp on Tuesday. Wednesday night we installed a S&B cold air intake. This is what I believe is our problem....On Thursday we had a Kicker amp and 10" sub put in. When driving it home we every once in awhile heard a ding (a warning ding)...maybe once every an 45 min? We had to leave that night for a barrel race 6 hours away. Now we are heading to the barrel race with our big LQ trailer plugged in, lights on, etc. Well as we are driving we would hear this ding every so often and then the brake light would flash quickly and disappear so we checked the parking brake to make sure it wasn't a little stuck causing a sensor to go off....it was fine. Then our overhead display would get really bright and then dim back down every once in awhile. About 30 minutes from out destination put the brights on and all the gauges in the truck went flat. Overhead display went blank. We were able to continue driving until we reached the arena just fine but just didn't have any gauges. Lights still all worked just fine. So we are pretty sure that the amp is pulling too much power. The batteries in the truck are only a year old. What are some options for us? Do we need to get a larger alternator, have ours checked, other things we could look into? I wouldn't think just adding an amp and 10" sub would pull that much power but it is. The radio, speakers are stock the only change to the audio was the amp and one 10" sub. When we drove home on Sunday it dinged at us and the display got brighter but the gauges continued to work just fine. We just avoided putting the brights on to not draw too much power again.
Advice please. Thank you! :) |
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Expert
Posts: 1561
 
| The amps draw isnt the problem in my opinion, if it pushes your charging system over the edge you already had a weak link in the system and the amp is exposing it.
Did you use the correct size wire for the amp?
Is it grounded correctly?
I would go back through and check all the connections and make sure its grounded to bare metal. If that doesnt correct it then get the alternator tested.
Just my opinion... |
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Husband Spoiler
Posts: 4151
Location: North Dakota | Itsme - 2015-04-20 4:35 PM The amps draw isnt the problem in my opinion, if it pushes your charging system over the edge you already had a weak link in the system and the amp is exposing it. Did you use the correct size wire for the amp? Is it grounded correctly? I would go back through and check all the connections and make sure its grounded to bare metal. If that doesnt correct it then get the alternator tested. Just my opinion...
Thanks. We had it professinally done so I would HOPE they did it correctly but I guess you just never know. My husband said he was going to call the guy that installed it to let him know what is going on. I will let you know what we can find out. Hopefully it is an easy fix. |
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Expert
Posts: 1561
| The headlights still working correctly is the weird part. |
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Husband Spoiler
Posts: 4151
Location: North Dakota | Itsme - 2015-04-20 4:57 PM The headlights still working correctly is the weird part. Yes, the headlights continued to work no problem. I was just guessing that the truck maybe started to shut off non-necessary things such as gauges and overhead display so we could continue to safely drive? The radio continued to work too though. All the interior dash lights continued to stay on as well. We did shut the radio off when the gauges went flat but of course the amp would still be pulling power even with the radio off since we didn't pull over to shut the amp off. On our way home we wanted to shut the amp off but didn't know how. I guess we should have got a training course on how to work it when we had it installed...haha. We couldn't find a power button. But it was dark, late, we were tired, and the amp is in tight place that is hard to fully get a good look at (under the driver's seat).
We drove home with lights and radio on the whole way and it was fine. We just avoided putting the brights on. It did ding once in awhile and the overhead display did brighten and dim but otherwise everything worked great.
Edited by Just Bring It 2015-04-20 5:20 PM
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Husband Spoiler
Posts: 4151
Location: North Dakota | My other question was if there was too much pull wouldn't the voltmeter in the dash display this? The voltmeter was in the normal range the whole time until every gauge went flat then it too just went flat. |
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Husband Spoiler
Posts: 4151
Location: North Dakota | The cold air intake wouldn't cause this problem would it?
My husband talked to the guy that installed it and he doesn't believe it could be alternator related. He said the amp doesn't draw anymore power than the electric windows. He said to check the battery connections. |
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 Expert
Posts: 4121
Location: SE Louisiana | Itsme - 2015-04-20 4:35 PM
The amps draw isnt the problem in my opinion, if it pushes your charging system over the edge you already had a weak link in the system and the amp is exposing it.
Did you use the correct size wire for the amp?
Is it grounded correctly?
I would go back through and check all the connections and make sure its grounded to bare metal. If that doesnt correct it then get the alternator tested.
Just my opinion...
Yeah.. Bad grounds can be quirky.... It could be drawing its ground off other things not wired to deal with extra ohms. That's what this sounds like to me..
Edited by komet. 2015-04-21 8:06 PM
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Expert
Posts: 1561
| Does it only do this when hooked to the trailer?
Did it start this right after the amp install?
A wire could have been knocked loose or broke while installing the under hood goodies, you might want to check all wires that may have been disturbed or damaged.
Thats all I have. |
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Husband Spoiler
Posts: 4151
Location: North Dakota | Thanks for the help and options to look into. We have not driven it much since having it done so I am not sure if it would do it without the trailer hooked up. It did have a warning ding when not hooked up to the trailer but like I said the gauges and everything went flat just that one time while pulling the trailer and turning the brights on. We will start with checking out the wiring that we can easily see and get to and the batteries of course. |
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Husband Spoiler
Posts: 4151
Location: North Dakota | Itsme - 2015-04-21 8:06 PM Does it only do this when hooked to the trailer? Did it start this right after the amp install? A wire could have been knocked loose or broke while installing the under hood goodies, you might want to check all wires that may have been disturbed or damaged. Thats all I have.
We drove it about 90 miles with the intake in before having the amp installed but it never did give a warning ding then. It wasn't until after the amp was installed that we heard the first ding. |
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