So my 7.3L has been sitting for a week, after looking under the hood I went to start it and... No start, with a weird noise. Here's a video:


Not sure where to go from here.

 

I tried to boost it but to no avail. The best I could get was two excruciatingly slow cranks followed by more clicking. I'm almost certain this is electrical as the dash was intermittently dimming and the gauge (volts?) was showing next to nothing for the most part.

 

Sounds like dead batteries. Make sure you have a good conection at the terminals and check your cables also get a volt meter and test the voltage on the batteries. You do have 2 right? Being 12 volt batteries you should not have anything less then 11.4 if you do put them on charge. How old are the Batteries? If you have a crappy cable you might only be pulling power from one.

 

Thanks for the reply! I only purchased the truck about a month ago, so I couldn't tell you how the old the batteries are but they look like they could have a few years on them. Yes, I have two. I'll see about picking up a volt meter and check the connections.

 

Just to wrap up this thread, new batteries solved the problem.

 

Glad to hear that. Good luck with your truck.

 

Thanks but...

Looks like the problem isn't solved after all. Started perfectly fine yesterday, now it won't even crank and is reading about 6.9V with a voltmeter on both batteries... Now I'm thinking alternator but I guess I'd better get some juice in it just to start it so I can actually test the alternator before jumping to conclusions (like I did when I went ahead and replaced the batteries, ).

 

Ok so I couldn't even get it to crank with a boost. I was getting the batteries up around 12.5V-13.5V but the voltage drops rapidly when the key hits the ON position. I'm not sure what would cause this. Maybe I should be aimlessly digging around for a short somewhere on the truck? It'll have to sit for another week now.

 

Any suggestions on where to go from here?