Motor Age TST Battery Starter Alternator 08 20 22

[Music] hey good evening everybody welcome to tonight's webcast uh as always i am pete meyer good friend she truly i'm still me the last time i chat um we know again i wanted to start off the webinar tonight by saying that we know that there's a lot of things that you could be doing on a saturday evening we appreciate you making the choice to spend that time with us and if you've come to any of our webcasts or any of the presentations that either of us have done live you know that we do share one thing in common we respect and understand that your time is valuable and we're gonna do everything in our power to make sure that your decision to spend your time with us was a wise one and we don't waste a single second of it um like we kind of teased in the beginning your nice topic a professional approach to battery starting charging systems no it sounds kind of fundamental but we also promise that somewhere along the line we're going to show you at least some one thing that you didn't know before and hopefully bring up the speed on the challenges that you face today's electronic electrical systems yeah and you know pete we were discussing something before off camera this is basic stuff but guess what what fixes vehicles yeah basic stuff yep and knowing that you know just like we have a bmw here in the other bay and that x five five okay i was gonna say three at first let me turn my head back around there x5 when we got pm is the bmw expert but that x5 they've had problems with batteries where they have changed the cca rating and you had to update it okay so a battery is not a battery it's just like a regular 12 volt lead acid battery it's 2.1 volts per cell right 12.6 well when you get an agm battery that's no longer true you're about 12.8 so these are little things that you have to know why well if you put the wrong battery in that bmw or for that matter any vehicle we could have a bunch of different problems absolutely and before i go too far certainly don't want to uh forget to thank uh tst vp pierre spo for helping us man the board and chat box and throwing in his commentary from time to time from his world of expertise in the bmw field and then uh have to credit their uh miss doreen our lovely camera person there that takes care of making sure that you can see what what uh we want you to see and and uh and then sometimes things that we don't want you to see but that's okay that's okay hey what do you want for free yeah and the other thing i want to point out here that that i've been saying a lot lately if you're watching when you're watching this tonight yes battery started charging systems sound it is fundamental stuff but you know what the fundamentals are changing on a daily basis and you're going to see some things tonight that maybe you weren't quite aware of and you don't think about because this is something that you do routinely every single day and you just keep doing it the way you've always done it right so you don't know necessarily what you don't know hopefully we'll shine some light on that and the other thing i want to start off too before we dive into the meat of the matter is this the vehicles that you guys and gals are working on today are the most highly technical highly complex marbles of engineering that the automakers have ever produced and we've been facing challenges throughout our careers and new technologies but not at the pace that they're coming at you today the whole thing about this when you're working on those vehicles in your shop today close enough ain't good enough anymore you are either fixing the vehicle right or you're fixing the vehicle wrong and probably preaching to the choir because you're here tonight to you know learn to make sure that you are keeping fixing the vehicles right and we want you know that we appreciate that and want to do everything we can to support you in that okay no doubt all right got to give some credit of course to the folks that made tonight possible that's our friends at door last yes and or what maybe third time back this year yeah yeah in fact they're already like one to help us out again next year and and for all the sponsors that you've seen over the course of our last several webinars guys give them some props you know check them out see if they can help you in the course of your business and your daily job because they have an interest in doing what we just said helping you in those lines and they even welcome your feedback so if you have a problem with in this case a door or last part or something don't just and moan let them know what is actually wrong with it yeah i'm going to encourage you go to the website duralastparts.com and check them out you may be surprised that the door lasts today is not the dear last you might have known five or ten years ago very true you know i remember when we did the break one yeah you had used the brakes on the one yeah and you know when i looked at them i hadn't looked at them in a while i had tested them maybe i don't know about eight years ago i put them on my jeep and i was was not happy with them but the new stuff is pretty amazing yeah and it's like you know that's that's like these companies are in business to make money right no question when they know that something ain't right and they see it affecting their bottom line they're going to take action to fix it and that's what they're doing and pete they need to know there's a problem right absolutely that's an important thing now even with your tools whatever if someone has a problem with something they need to give the feedback not on diag.net and iatn or whatever i mean that may get looked at by one of those big companies yeah but really contact the company oh yeah yeah you're not only going to help you as the tech or a shop owner but you can help many others and that's what it's all about helping each other right yeah and i gotta give a personal testimony on uh their last uh i mean if you guys watch me on facebook facebook you know that not too long ago i got back from a cross-country trip when we had a few challenges and i can say speak one of them one of them left me on the side of i-90 in montana and i had the aarp and i had the aaa and they had all these different uh supposedly helpful roadside assistance dealios and you know the one came through it was the one that i got from owning a duralast gold batteries in my vehicle that actually the dirt last gold series batteries and their gold series components i'm going to show you tonight they knew they come with a five-point roadside assistance and they were all set to help somebody's not there to help me so they responded you got to give them props for that too and lucky you had some good techs out that way we did they came out and helped you we did a great great area i like being out there all right so first from some routine webinar stuff like we do uh before the start of every webinar first if you want to copy or tonight's presentation here's the webca website just go to bit.ly that's one of those little bitly things and just battery webinar type that in and you will be able to download a copy of the handout the slides that we're using tonight for your own notes if you don't happen to have those handy you're able to print them out as we get started no worries you can always just take some notes piece of paper pencil you know and write them down no doubt um and then i think tonight you can figure we'll probably be here well we always send me about 90 minutes but we never make that limit so we tend to talk a lot but that's okay hey when you're done right where you signed up on your account you can go back there and and this part of the bottom is going to be active you may see it when you first sign on that you know when you complete it you come back and type and print out a certificate so when you're done go back there and you can click here and then you print out that certificate of uh for attending and and that way if you're an educator you can use that for your continuing education credits and if you're just tech shop owner you can oh i'm sorry you want to do the little thing or wait a minute microphone one more click there we go look at that one there so there you go now you can uh that then you go there for that he like throw me off here all right if you have any questions uh type them in the chat we'll do our best to uh answer them as we go along but as always we don't know everything nope but we are fortunate enough to know really a lot of smart people in our industry that we can get the answer from them so there are email addresses here's mine make sure you make a note of that and let's see if i make sure i got my buddies right again correct correct right well that'd be because i just borrowed the slide from the last one but so we know we got that one right okay all right here's we're going to talk about tonight no i don't want to well yeah but no that's she's coming later [Laughter] all right so we're gonna fight we'll start with batteries get up there i think it seems like you know if you got the slide on the screen you can see it what am i doing challenges batteries you got the challenge uh the challenge of battery technologies today common service mistakes that guys are making all around the country and this is from the people who make the batteries and are getting them back and and they're nothing wrong with the batteries uh battery testing we're actually going to show you four different ways to test the battery and we're going to do a brief explanation here and then we'll go on the car and actually do it on the car and let me explain one thing here uh pete common service mistakes when you condemn a battery did you check and we've seen this multiple times including we had a x5 bmw i made a little video years ago there was a proximity sensor that is basically how the door opens or unlocks well it went to a bmw dealer they sold this lady a new battery and an alternator she went back a couple of times they switched the battery out thinking it's a battery problem let's not forget about parasitic draw oh absolutely okay very important don't just condemn the battery or maybe that alternator was bad i didn't see it before if the alternator is not charging we'd like to be at least one volt over what the battery is not either 12 6 12 8 you want 13 6 or 8. if not don't just condemn the battery that seems to be a big mistake yeah sometimes the battery is the bearer bad news but it's not the cause so like with anything else you know make sure you dig deep enough to figure that out right and on today's vehicle when we have nvld an actual vacuum leak detection you know you could have a parasitic draw because it doesn't when the car is off you got to make sure it's timed out when you're checking it and did it really go off right you know it's like when i close a refrigerator at all i always wonder those lights really go off now my fat ass won't fit in the refrigerator besides doreen would kill me but i'm always wondering does the light really go off well all you need to do is take an amp clamp you can see the current with the doors shut and with the door open and you'd be able to know there you go so that way my ass doesn't go where it doesn't belong right after we do that we're going to talk about starting systems a little bit uh primarily you know who's really in charge of operating the starter you know it's like that's almost every system on the vehicle now you're asking a computer for permission to do something you can't you don't have direct control oh you can't go well if that bug you can uh is the is it the problem with the starter or is it a problem with voltage drop so we're going to show you how to perform a voltage drop test on the starter motor circuit and something else we're going to show you how to check the cables when you know for sure that the battery is i mean the starter shot and you want to complete your diagnosis how are you going to check those cables that the load you need to use is no good it won't work we'll show you how to do that too and speaking of cables not not to forget do not use those emergency end cable ends the ones where you cut and bolt the thing in that is vd at its best okay you're asking for trouble there absolutely you need to make sure cut the cable back to a a spot where there's no corrosion left in that cable and then you're gonna need to put a piece of heat shrink lay it back flat for a while and then crimp the cable and also you know a lot of people use the stuff that they put the little um pellet in there and you heat it up yeah the problem i've seen with those is if your starter or engine is pulling a lot of current it desolders itself oh interesting yeah i've seen that on more than one vehicle yeah so we use the big crimper pliers we could use the other ones that you can use a pneumatic gun on or a regular ratchet then you would put the heat shrink over it and you're sure you got a very good connection absolutely and then from there we'll move on to the charging system again we're going to focus on performing a voltage drop test on the alternator system and again show you a couple of ways of doing that and which one might be the better choice of the two that we're going to show you and while we're in there we may do a little combination that battery starting charging system scope test show that a little bit it's part of the testing methods and then we'll dive into it and talk about ac ripple i bet you i know something about ac ripple you don't know just check her out and find that out i'm gonna bet on him all right let's go and get started i wanted to put this sample uh picture up here you saw it on like the cover promoting the the webcast tonight but guys you've heard me say this and hear miss julia say this numerous times you're the professional when your customer brings a vehicle to your shop or if you're working for someone else and you're the tech in that shop ultimately you're the professional that they're entrusting their vehicle to they may not come right out and say that but it's like going to your family doctor when you go up there and you know i got a sore throat and you go to the doctor you kind of expect the guy or gal to make sure they check you all over and point out anything that that you may not know about right it's the same here you're the professional your customers are not expected to be experts in the field you are and you should give them every benefit of your training your experience your expertise and helping them and it's not just about helping them get the most out of the vehicle and to minimize their cost of ownership but it's to protect their family you know think about it if you have a problem and you don't diagnose or check the battery condition for example and they find themselves stranded somewhere in the middle of nowhere maybe it's not the best of neighborhoods and she's alone and it's dark you see where i'm going with this you have to think in those lines at least i always tried to do that yeah murphy's loads could happen at the worst time and what's the heart of the whole electrical system on today's vehicle the battery yep and let's not forget 12 volt batteries are still in even evs yep you know it's not just that big battery pack it's a regular battery so we still need to know how to test it and make sure it's good yeah and we can show too that a lot of these systems that we're focused on fundamentally as the primary have impacts on another system in the vehicle that can lead to unnecessary cost of repair or failure that that doesn't have to happen right correct all right so let's start talking about the challenges all right the vehicles that we service have become increasingly electrified i think we all know that i try to remember what the number i heard was i want to say it was the next five years or by 2030 or it's not that far away guys 30 percent 30 what's that's one-third that's more than three vehicles on the road will be hybrid or electric powered and i recently did a diesel presentation that that i mentioned this background on i would say the last quarter of last year which was the last sales numbers that i had available hybrids outsold diesels significantly and all those are so well you know down where i'm at redneck country you know with all like we like our trucks right so we sold a lot of diesel trucks but hybrids are actually out selling diesels now let's not forget there are a you know hybrid trucks as well that have yeah yeah i mean we use a lot in the new york city area because you can't idle a lot so utility companies using them again we're dealing with electric and they're all going to have 12 volt batteries and i think the biggest thing that maybe you're not aware of on the everyday you know taking care of your customer vehicles but already major fleet companies i'm talking about ups i'm talking about amazon a lot of these big companies are incorporating a lot of evs into their fleet when they're doing the urban markets you know for the cost savings and and the and the lower maintenance costs yeah they're they're they're coming they're not well they're not coming they're here but they're coming in a lot faster they're the red coats are coming yeah the british are coming right that's what it is okay anyway so the electrification automobile automobile is also creating a lot higher electrical demand on the battery and charging system uh but this creates a negative impact on fuel economy because the the power that we use to drive the wheels has to be diverted to drive the alternator so you're going to see a lot of things that they're doing differently now to to they want to keep the battery up to where it needs to be but they want to do it at a minimum level so they're not taking anything away from the engine that they would let's talk about a ram that we had in here recently a ram with a 48 volt system the 48 volt system is basically a big belt alternator starter so you have our conventional solder that's going to start the engine up and this was a hemi okay start it up when it's cold but once that engine has been warmed and reaches a certain temperature rather than start stop beating the hell out of the starter motor right every time you come to a stop it's going to shut down save fuel save pollution and then start it up by this bas system and 48 volts is behind it another reason for 48 volts is you've all seen this if you've done an obd2 scan of the monitors heated catalytic converter but they probably haven't seen one right well with 48 volts they could heat that catalytic converter up so you're in closed loop all the time yeah so if the gas engine stays around you're gonna be seeing much more of that oh absolutely i mean all the technologies today guys are are to get the maximum economy and fuel mileage out of these engines i i think the target is still in place for 20-25 so that's i mean we're in the 23 model years so we're only taking a few years off now where they have to hit what's called a corporate average fuel economy which means the average of every vehicle they sold 54.50 yeah almost 55 miles per gallon that's a that's again that's why you're seeing what you're seeing changing under the hood on the on the gasoline cars that's where gdi came from that's where start stock came from that's where uh now of course the growth in evs all to that end and like you were just saying that's another big challenge that today's batteries have to meet is that star stop i mean think of this soccer mom you know driving in town and it's constantly starting and stopping that that that motor and not all vehicles are allowed to shut off by gm for their cafe corporate average fuel economy they made a deal with the government where they are not allowing the driver to shut off stock stop it is automatic on that car now some other vehicles like bmw whatever they're going to pay a fee if they don't shut it off but gm of course would like to shut it off but they'd rather get the credits for the corporate aggregate absolutely now as the battery gets older we understand that the internal plates of course they start to degrade we all understand that and more current is required to maintain its overall state of charge but of course that that also figures in the battery management strategies that we're going to talk about uh another feature that we talked about already the start stop function and that's a new demand on conventional batteries and the ability to stand more frequent cycling of the batteries now what is cycling hey i'm glad you asked i can't do that cycling is the cycle of charge and discharge that a battery goes through especially when it's depleted by the requirements of the starting system think about it what's the biggest demand on that battery and that's when the starter is engaged a lot of current being drawn very very quickly voltage being pulled down very very quickly that has to be replenished okay that's just one discharge charge cycle look at start stop how many discharge charge cycles during the course of an average day for that average vehicle do you think there might be just dozens that i could think dozens and that puts a tremendous strain on that battery now to address the need for higher cyclic durability and more starting power improved battery designs have been developed and you're probably familiar with at least the first one the agm or the absorb glass mat and then the efb battery is another one in that market so here's just the cutaway of what the absorbed glass mat battery looks like of course absorbed glass just means that the electrolyte is in the saturated fiberglass mat that's in between the cells and the whole reason we have that is so that the electrolyte can be stored within the glass mat and and allowing any gases given off during charging stay in the battery it's a truly sealed battery so the idea is if a normal course is charging of course we're going to give off that gas we're going to give off that that water and this way it stays in the case and it can be recombined so no the water has ever lost all right and this is another reason why any vehicle this is an sae standard any vehicle where any battery that is inside a vehicle i should say has to be an agm if it's outside it could be a regular wet type cell type of battery but anything that is in the car including the trunk area must be an agm battery absolutely good point um now agm batteries are typically fitted as oe equipment and higher end vehicles equipped with the start stop and of course some of the hybrid vehicles like you just pointed out it is required if the batteries are mounted in anywhere in the interior whether it's trunk or cabin area of course it has to be an agm type battery it's a safety measure required in order to buy or prevent passenger contacts with battery acid in case of a collision or an accident right next agm also offers improved performance over conventional flooded cell designs it offers four to five times the cycle it durability you know this battery can take that kind of punishment much much better than conventional flooded cell battery and typically 16 higher starting power even at lower temperatures so pete you mean this is just like marine type batteries are a totally different battery than a regular lead acid car battery right or wet cell they're all lead in them but so different battery technology for different type of use absolutely absolutely now this is something where we really kind of stretch on because again you deal with batteries um and these systems on a daily basis and you probably think you know them in your sleep but i'm going to share one of the things that we are learning from just talking to people that make the batteries and what they're seeing out in the field you have to understand with an agm battery charging voltage is critical to maintaining the health and condition of that battery okay it is entirely different than a conventional flooded cell battery it's called a recombinant design which means that the oxygen that's normally produced on the positive plate of the lead acid batteries recombines the hydrogen gives off a water h2o and then the recycled water keeps the light level constant right we talked about we just said that right it all stays inside the in the case and that's why you can't add anything to those batteries yeah there's no way to open it no way to open it they sure still don't want you to now here's where you want i want to make sure you're listening to what we're saying these batteries have a pressure relief valve a ceiling vent if you will and i figured they call it a vslr some fancy name bmw uses a tube connected to the battery to vent well now that's there if it if it blows off the idea is it's not going to supposed to blow off okay it's there's a safety precaution for something should happen so the battery doesn't blow up in the car it's a safety relief however here's what's happening in the really real world you're installing an agm battery and i'll tell you because this is like popular down in the neck of the woods where i'm at when we got all them good old boys out four wheeling in the woods and in trucks and they heard they said that and and my jeep forum at you know you can get these things called an agm battery and because they're matted you can beat the hell out of it and they ain't gonna they're gonna crack or spill acid anywhere problem is the charging system of the truck they're putting it in isn't designed for the agm so it's charging it at too high a voltage rate what do you think it's going to do to that that hd that water is going to start to boil that up it's going to build pressure it releases from the event and then when the vent closes up again guess what electrolyte level now is too low and it's going to be just a short matter of time before that new agm battery that that that guy wanted in his truck it's just going to be a big black plastic box of junk that's no good anymore let me add one other thing to that so registration as mr pierre knows for many many years battery registration or programming if the battery has been changed for a different design is super important just for what pete said the charging rate if we don't register it doesn't know that there's a new agm in there and thought it had the old one well what did the computer learn hey this battery is weak we better keep a higher level on it this is a another important reason why all your your scan tools nowadays uh we did one a long time back maybe a few years or more where pierre and i connected to pierre's car and you were here pete and we registered a battery on a brand new bmw out of time so you could do that and it's not only european now you have we did it on a brand new ford vehicle yeah the other day and one on a three-year-old ford vehicle and everyone in their mother is going to be doing it why because they want to make sure the charging rate they don't want to overheat that battery yeah as you stated right and again the whole purpose of that that's all part of that battery management strategy as she pointed out the battery ages it requires more charging voltage to to keep it where it needs to be especially when we have to replenish what we took out every time we stopped the vehicle at a stop sign or a stop light all that's got to be put back in as the vehicles now they will actually tell the driver when it's time to replace the battery because it knows it's reached the end of its useful life so guys if you're not used to working on euros this may be entirely news to you go to your service learn procedures things that we always tell you guys and and so much more so today like i said earlier it's either right or it's not right there's no gray area anymore the basic things that we took for granted that we could do in our sleep you now still have to go to your service information system you have to read up on the oem processing procedure before you do something if you've never done it on that year make model in your bay take the time to as my friend likes to say rtfi what is that read the freaking information and all data is definitely a great place to find system description and operation yeah okay this isn't the comment here i'd like to add something i like to print i got 55 years in the industry i still like to print the procedure out and use it as a checklist oh that's a very good point of course now you're an old pilot so you're used to checklists but that's a great point you know when you're doing something and again if it may be a more involved procedure what better way to make sure that you don't overlook something that could come back and bite you in the backside and i'll tell you something else while you're looking in your scan tools uh service function menu you're gonna be surprised about a lot of things that you have to do on a new car or when you're changing a component that you didn't think you had to do before that's just a little little like the oxygen sensor heater yeah a reeler yeah absolutely for years all right next on is the efb uh that's the enhanced flooded battery again there's just a illustration of the construction of that design this is really a modified improved version of the conventional flooded cell battery but it's not a flooded cell battery you'll find this typically used in entry level vehicles with start stop technology and i don't know how long this has been around but it hasn't been real long maybe a few years because what i found early on doing an article some time ago on this topic from the manufacturers is that not every market had the efbs in stock when the vehicle needed a replacement so shops were putting in conventional flooded cell batteries in their place you can't do that again because this battery is 30 000 starts from a conventional battery versus 270 000 engine starts on an efb battery it's again that cyclic durability that the conventional battery can't match and there's the word the start stop system let's not only forget the battery is different and so is the starter motor yeah the starter motor is a heavier duty design that you have to make sure you use so the batteries like i said earlier the heart of the system you have to make sure that you have the right battery and that's a good point so how would one know they have an efb design is there a marking on the battery and look at that it says it right on the battery see oh it's open holding it i have to read uh i think we're probably going to touch that again but since you brought that point up i do want to say this well i'm not i'm not going to say that we do have it coming up and there you go the number was common service mistake failing to properly identify the type of battery prior to its testing service or replacement most common mistake that technicians are making out there in the field right now is not identifying the battery type uh the construction type this is critical guys you've got to use the same type and you've got to use the same group and you've got to use the same cca rated battery back in my day when we first started you know if your car came with a 500 cold crank amp battery go with a thousand you could say well if i got a thousand i know that baby will start you know and you put the biggest thing you could fit in the battery box that is not the case today we have a combat question yeah actually uh somebody had a problem with a new battery and but i wanted to illustrate this he said he got two batteries and tested them and one came back with 20 of its life left brand new battery it's a good idea to test your batteries before you install them in the car definitely the batteries the batteries we have here are always on a maintainer and we do test them before we put them in and after why you could get something defective whether it's an oe battery whether it's a door last make sure you check it and let's not only check the battery but how about the starting and charging system as we're going to go through on this the complete system works together hand in hand yeah so that's a great point to keep in mind and and just like pierre just said guys that's just common sense depending on who your parks house is it's not the quality of the part but sometimes it's the management of that individual location they're not properly rotating their stock or maintaining it like jesus said he keeps batteries in-house they keep him on a maintainer to keep him healthy so yes very valid point thanks for bringing that up all right number two on hit parade most common mistake using an old high-powered charger i can't use daddy's old charger for that plymouth it's been in the shop for years pete what the heck well you know what um we kind of giggle about that but let's be real with each other having both of us travel around the country i've been a lot of different shops around the country been to schools um where you can have some stuff antiquated equipment in the shop and again you say well it's a battery charger it does it charges batteries that's you know today you do need a charger in the shop that is capable of choosing between the type of battery being charged and the charging method used and not only that but if you're doing any kind of extended work where the electrical system's going to be on for a while or you're into programming vehicles then you should know that you need a special charger called a battery maintainer they are two different animals and you can't replace one for the other you could get a combination one that uh medtronics or um uh what's the one associated associated right we have them all over the place uh associated that charges that and a real quick true story so when prius's first came out and they used an agm new york city made a mistake they had their old battery charges by a nice red name brand company they needed to update okay they did they were starting to charge these batteries up and have problems with them they were ruining brand new batteries until you know i seen their issue and said hold it you can't use that charger yeah but they're brand new from the red guys right it's really good i said not to this application right that's why you have you know associated and or medtronics and other companies snap-on now as well that are using batteries uh chargers that are pulse modulated they're not going to put a full charge in and burn that battery up case temperature should never go over 125 fahrenheit and if you don't pulse it and you just get a wicked hard ass charge in there well you're going to have a problem with that yeah absolutely absolutely and i want to go back to the first one again because we we kind of hit another replacement but this applies to your testing guys as well when you're and we're going to show you that when we demonstrate the testing methods anytime you're having to do any kind of service inspection repair whatever to make sure you identify the battery type number three we kind of hit it out already installing the wrong battery for the application very big deal in fact it's one of the things i would encourage you guys when you're having some type of weird electrical stuff going on or a drivability issue we're going to show you the first thing you want to check is the battery regardless right but while you're checking that battery note the size the age make sure it's the correct one for the application and if it is the vehicle that is coated or programmed go in the scan tool and see does the code match the battery in the vehicle uh for example if you got batteries that the customer's going through batteries every six eight months nine months then maybe it's because it never got properly coated and and the charging the pcm still thinks it's the old battery and it's throwing a full ass charge on it and it's cooking the batteries unintentionally and you know we had one a q5 um audi in here that came from the dealer this is no bull i was amazed that they did not code that battery okay just because someone works in a dealer doesn't mean number one they went to all the factory training or number two you know you're trying to beat the clock okay and there's there's nothing wrong with trying to beat the clock but you got to do it the right way right right right so they can ruin the battery there's a number three as well and that is they got three cars to work on and they're distracted yeah well i think it's true anywhere yeah and i could have we all had that when i was i know i was when i was certainly full-time in the base it's like and you know i understand the boss humor case yeah you know but is your boss going to be happier because she's not seeing the same car come back in for a freebie because the first one wasn't done right um or that he's seeing his customers increase because hey where's getting out that when it comes to you it's done right you think he's been unhappy about all that he'll get over it you know so take the time like you said you either fix it right fixing it wrong i'll tell you something else that i've said before and i might get in trouble for it that's okay i've got in trouble before um i get calls from guys uh and we see it all the time who say that you know our shop doesn't support us and get any training we don't get the time off they don't want us any credit you know whatever they're not supportive i'm not getting paid enough the working condition whatever the case might be guys you know right now you're in the cat bird seat especially those of you who are taking the time to be on listen this webcast because you're that that small percentage of the whole that wants to be more professional wants to improve their skill sets wants to do a better job and you are in high demand so if there's a shop in your community you're not happy with where you're at i'm i'm willing to bet there's a shop in your community that's dying to see you come in the front door and talk to them you bet i know one in mailpack new york very correct right yes sir the question is how about battery chargers that are that are have a setting for efbs is there a difference what you know are they available yet uh efbs are certainly available i know early on there was it was like just for the market but that's been a little bit ago now so efbs should be readily available in your parts house of course journalists of course can supply that the charge uh the charger batteries i think yeah they have a special efb one oh yeah oh i know it's like i just learned something new i have a core automotive charger that's i've had for a while now that has efb as a selection on it wow okay you know what i i think that new associated one may have because that's a menu screen i know the older ones don't but that one may have it in there yeah and and you know i guess you have the newer stuff you may not realize it's in the menu simply because in fact you're not getting that many in yet you know what i mean generally you're seeing conventional and agm is the majority of the service that you're doing but we'll make sure that you understand that there's a third one out there that's a player in the game so just just be aware let's just give another tip you know we talk about batteries being the wrong ones or or being weak if you get a hybrid vehicle such as we'll play with a prius if the battery itself the 12-volt battery is not up to par whether it's the wrong one or it's weak you are not going to get the proper miles per gallon out of the vehicle and you go what do you mean well the system the way it works is that small 12 volt battery operates the 12 volt system on that car the electric motor produces energy that goes through igbt's integrated bipolar transistors and the inverter that basically is going to change ac to dc okay and it's going to go through the converter part of that as well and that is the alternator to charge that battery if that 12-volt battery is weak guess what it's going to keep doing robbing power and if it's robbing power or the big battery right well guess what a gas motor is going to run yeah and you're going to get less miles per gallon yeah yeah so that's a biggie that people forget about yeah i bet you on the evs it's probably even more so because now you're reducing range you bet you don't have an ice to back you up if uh that's why pierre asks what's that thing you got in there i have rather than the gas can and a a gas generator i have an electric powered generator yeah yeah absolutely all right a few additional notes for you it used to be thought that an agm battery could be used in place of a flooded design uh but information from the field of course is proving that's not always the case and we gave one kind of blatant example about misapplication uh like in a four-wheel drive application or truck uh to make sure that um the charging rates are not the same um an agm battery is more susceptible the damage caused by a mismatch between the battery and the charging system if it's installed in the engine compartment it can also be damaged by the high heat load there because they're really not designed for that application so instead of providing your customer the battery that should last longer you're really just setting them up for an expensive and premature failure same is true for efb batteries um shops like we said are substituting with the are substituting them with the conventional designs when they don't think they can find one or uh instead of waiting or ordering the proper replacement battery in fact nissan even issued a tsb noting that their models using an afv battery had to be replaced by a specific oem replacement part only okay so just just make sure how you know that hey rtfi because i learned rtf5 from this guy over here okay so all right so this is going to be uh some um recap and and reinforcement of some things we've talked about so far again a lot of vehicles that are you're working on now have a battery management strategy is only one small part of the things that the engineers are doing to these vehicles today to reach that cafe requirement and to make these these engines more efficient as early as the 2002 model year they've been incorporated in many vehicles the whole idea is to create a fine balance between maintaining the battery's ability to provide the needed power to the various vehicle systems while also reducing the power loss to the engine that would be caused by running the alternator and just to reinforce the battery holder the internal plates of course are going to degrade it's going to take more current to maintain the state of charge the ecm learns that but unless we tell it that we put a new one in so it can reset and start from scratch you're gonna have having problems with the with the battery now coding and programming a little kind of different definite right definitely different so coding it's like okay i just got to tell the ecm i put a battery in it it's going to date it and yeah give a couple of blanks in there but this this actually has a code on the battery there we go that you have to either scan that little qr code or you have to put that number in there you can see there's the bem code and that is going to be as part of the step when you program the system good thing is a lot of the higher end aftermarket scan tools have that feature in them so it's not a problem for you right you got cameras in them they can scan it and put it right in and show you that you need to put that in yeah but these are things that either people don't know about okay and that's why when pete said you're gonna learn a couple of things here you are okay you're gonna pick some stuff up that maybe the way we do everything every day is not what we should be doing today and i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna this is i'm we don't have a lot of delay but i'm gonna ask a favor from all you guys who are watching okay so far just when we showed you on some of the things the nuances of battery service and inspection if you've picked up one thing that you haven't heard of before or knew of before i don't care what it is would you type a y in the chat box real quick and if you i'm going to make a y because i've learned a thing the one thing before and uh and if you're and if you said no so far it's all all hat to me then type an end and look i'm just going to wait a minute i want to see what kind of response we get from that it's only one button guys so you know get the finger exercise push the button in there okay look at that look at that water wise thank you all right thank you very much a lot of wise hey thank you so much we appreciate that feedback and again that's why we do these webcasts for you guys and if you've been around with us friendly at the time we've been doing this for a long time and and that's what gave birth to this whole concept of coming out in the shop and doing these these informational broadcasts so that you can get the information that you need to to succeed uh so thank you i really appreciate that all right we do thank you all right service tip if you noted that the battery you're replacing is not the original battery for the car i mean it's not the factory design you know it's got another branding on it whatever it might be and your customers complaining it was only last year so ago that they had that one installed like we said earlier check your scan tool data go into that bms menu and look has it been updated you know if you see it has never been updated then it's a good bet that's that's the cause of your problem you know so use that and don't be discouraged on some of the scan tools now some of them really stick it right out there yeah you're going to know here's battery registration whatever others they're buried do not be discouraged i know this just happened in the shop uh probably two three weeks ago where a particular scan people want you in the name they had it hidden in a couple of menus yeah yeah so it's there factory tool is usually a lot easier but uh i'll give or tell and snap on both the plug and launch they have them right here yeah i mean i think it's the service function menu yeah yeah and how do we get all of it in there so it's just again check it out and know your tool yeah and while we're talking about that topic the next time you have that tool hooked up whatever you're doing to the vehicle two things i won't encourage you to do it's a little off topic but i'm gonna throw this out here because it has to do with being a professional when i was raised up in the field you were taught to do a visual inspection check the oil check the fluids kick the tires look at the brakes you know that you could everything you could just kind of get a general feel so you could tell your customer give them a good idea what kind of condition their vehicle was in but now i think the average vehicle has like 40 computers on it higher end 200 plus your vehicle and your customers vehicles are more and more electronic why don't you take the time as part of that first inspection hook up to your enhanced mode and do a full system scan do a full system scan and that's why you can see as you heard me just whisper pre-scan the vehicle first of all you know what uh running a shop i can tell you two things you don't want a customer coming back mad because you just worked on a car and you have not done that pre-scan okay or them getting stuck and getting real cranky right right if you do that pre-scan and you tell them hey look here you got some problems in this system yeah but i only want to fix my engine at least you identified that problem and told them it's like this bmw we have here this guy had a problem we told them the hoses and the thermostat all of them had to be replaced because his oil cooler went what did he do we called up the other day thank god he didn't get me he got bill and you know read him the right act and bill said hold it we told you you needed all those hoses you had oil running through your system it's the same with a battery or anything else let them know let them know absolutely they're not going to know so the visual is great but the scan tool that is right on top and you get a great and great documentation you print the pre you show them the need you fix it you do the post you got proof you fixed it and you're covered i'm sorry pierre quinn uh and i'm going to add and if they say no then you're also covered right just make them initial yeah you can't make it yes there was a question uh do you have a recommendation for a battery tester that can also do the resets oh um i'm going to be very careful here a lot of the tool manufacturers make them they really do of course we've been doing a lot of work or autel has been a big helper on on on the motorray side sponsoring our trainer series now for last few years and i would say one thing i do like about their tool the handheld unit and i think it's incorporating their scan tool as well but when you connect to the uh to do your testing it's not going to do just the testing it will walk you by the hand in terms of replacement why is that important today you can't just disconnect the battery and put the new one in it's not that simple anymore in some manufacturers there's a very specific procedure they want you to use in order to replace that battery and if you just disconnect it every module in the vehicle goes crazy loses their minds and if you don't know what's going to have to be relearned or worse yet you do the job and then find out after the fact that these things have to be done and you're not capable of doing them well now you have more problems than you started radio codes and how about using a battery maintain a box on a bmw oh if you didn't know that you shouldn't be doing that because you're going to pop a fuse and also on vehicles that where the cigarette lighter for example goes dead when the ignition is off your maintainer box just got disconnected when you turn the ignition off oh well even nowadays i mean back way back in the day we had the nine volt battery stick them in oh well it's not a cigarette lighter right it's the power outlet but uh back then you know we we actually had a little well no matter and we used to plug in the nine volt battery but you you learned pretty quickly that when you turn the open the door and all the interior lights came on that nine volt battery went poof pretty quick and it's not connected to all the vehicle systems um we're going to show you a little bit later on one way that you can do that but again that's just one example i think snap-on makes a similar tool major tool companies they all have something similar i encourage you to to look them over compare feature benefit and cost and go as best yeah and read the information the rtfi is super important because just like that bmw i mentioned you think the jumper box that you use through your obd2 connector first of all is pin 16 have a blown fuser pin four is ground yeah but 16 don't have power you got an open that ain't gonna work maintaining a normal car but use that on a bmw it's gonna look like an early christmas the whole dash is gonna light up and you're gonna have to go change your fuse so yeah read information or thank you for attending we're giving you info yeah one more i'd like to add one more thing in this journey um you know jerry said it a bunch of times she's going to continue saying read the information every vehicle has a specific amount of time to go to sleep and you probably should familiarize yourself with that yeah especially yeah it can vary quite a bit you need to put it just make you go to sleep before you do that battery yeah at the very least and again so there's and the other thing i want to mention is kind of back to the side note that's a good one we said about the service learn uh function wherever it might be buried on your tool or right up front in your face like a lot of the the bigger names are i encourage you when you hook up to that that vehicle you completed your full system scan your pre-scan look at that menu because you're going to be surprised at some of the things that you have to relearn now through the scan tool that you didn't have to do before the car would do it automatically after you drove it for a while or it was a manual way to do it so many and you'll be surprised at some of the things i have in that list that you wouldn't think in the world that you would even have to bother relearning but you do today but we'll give them a good one if you don't do the window relax and it starts raining like this guy has some of those torrential rains down in florida okay we get them here once a while but if you don't do the procedure they want you to do put the windows down put them up or the moon roof back and forth you may go out to a vehicle the windows were closed but now all of a sudden it rained and guess what the windows are open yeah well you actually had a great example right here in your own shop where you know the the one of the local parts houses trying to be nice put the battery in for your customer when the window rolled down and and guess what they put the battery in no now the window wouldn't roll down and it did start raining on it right yes yeah and so and she had in the display it didn't have the odometer reading it had error yeah all right so let's start with some battery inspection and testing tips oh this is my favorite thing that pete you got to blow that up i wanted to say that let's see hang on i'm going to blow that baby up look at that bring that bring that up look at that and i'm going to do it even more can everybody see that that was kind of crowded that's bd at its best yeah but i want to point out this is what he was talking about earlier this is the emergency only battery cable replacement and it's got that little flat plate and the two bolts to tighten down on it and brutal the symptom i always saw was that you go to try to start the vehicle you get one click and then everything died until you cycled the key again and then when you go through the same process but absolutely great example of voltage drop yeah and it's it's not professional to use one of these in an emergency situation fine but if you don't have the correct battery tools go visit you know in autozone and make sure you buy the right stuff to do it or don't do it or buy a new cable but this is absolutely a disgrace and by the way you see the top of the battery right there if you did a test on the battery with your meter you will pick up voltage right from the top of the battery leave the negative cable on the negative terminal take the positive and go on top of the battery not connected to the positive post just on top of the battery and you may read six eight volts or even more well i wonder why that could be my friend it's an oily residue on top of the battery isn't it oil is conducted conduct you just made a path between the positive and negative side of the battery there's current flowing that's a drain that creates that that that corrosion is not because it's been exposed to the salt air down there in florida that's because it's being exposed battery vapor is getting out and it's not supposed to you see that it's not just about a clamp corrosion but correcting the condition that caused it that's right all right and there we go there's like that's a no-no plus and uh yes these are from amazon.com you can buy them there today right and even color-coded well that's gonna make them better makes them better all right first step as always visual inspection here's just a few things that you look for like we said earlier first verify correct battery type construction type group size and cca rating for the application we should stick in there too reserve capacity too because the cca goes up reserve capacity goes down and that could be a problem on some vehicles absolutely physical damage to the battery of course any any uh damage to the case or any signs of swelling swelling like this you mean my swelling are you talking about my swelling swelling is a big problem yeah okay when you see the case starting to expand okay like i have expanded okay well you got a problem so that is an important thing that people don't look at and that you could actually sit of course any obvious sign of like electrolyte leakage indicating a crack in the battery case uh corrosion on the battery cable connections again that's what i said earlier that indicates a vending of gas somewhere and these are all supposed to be sealed maintenance-free batteries today um and that's leading to that loose cable connection very very common right just grab a hold up it doesn't wiggle this is a god's honest truth in this very bay many times doing a class i go like this to someone's cable i'm not talking i'm yanking on it just a little dude your cable's loose oh my check engine light sometimes would come on and off well here's the first place to start okay very very important and keep in mind when you do a voltage drop it all starts and ends at the battery so if it's if it's got the problem right right from the gate that's going to affect every system on the vehicle one other thing i want to mention corrosion at the cable on top but how about when the negative cable is stripped in a spot like on fords or toyotas chrysler and chrysler where it's going down to be the ground to the battery uh to the chassis excuse me from the battery yeah you got to look down there because if that's corroded and this was a big problem with ford explorers the top of the battery would look beautiful but what can go through those cables and it would go down and you would get in no start condition so always take a look you know god gave you the brain the eyes the ears the nose the hands use them because it could help you solve a problem yeah absolutely and that's and that's something else we make sure we understand it if you have corrosion at the at the top well that corrosion likes to seep right down the cable and you don't know how far it extends how you're going to make sure you can check that you use some fundamental voltage drop tests right before you even start part of your troubleshooting and i want to say this for you guys we've done numerous webcasts on electrical testing and voltage drop testing in particular and i'm going to challenge you to ask yourself are you truly comfortable performing this type of test i meet technicians all around the country that still aren't and that's okay i was one of them and so like i learned how it all works and that's why it's one of our passions a couple of people have said your mic has dropped out or something mike dropped that oh hang on oh yeah that's the testing oh you did you died oh hang on hold on hold on i'm gonna undy them we did we didn't do a low check on the back i did i did load check them pop a couple out so okay hook me up bud you got the polarity correct let's make sure you're unmuted there you go you're good okay he's back now we're back why if you can hear him better now yeah can you hear me okay that's it okay thank you for bringing up your attention that's the beauty of doing these things live and i did load test for real yeah yeah no i hear you i mean i i was doing some projects in the garage not too long ago where i had audio issue and you realize it's like about half the video shot i had to do it every day anyway um so kind of recapping what we were saying earlier um about the the the loose cable connections uh corrosion passing through the cable ends voltage drop testing is how you're gonna find this there are a few basic checks i'd like to do before i even dive into the actual complaint when i do a voltage drop test but the key is you are sitting right now we've got one of the best resources available to you when you signed up for the webinar tonight you are now have a motorized training account and when you're done go check out the library yeah there's some pay-per-view titles in there but there's also a lot of free titles in there any of them would be worth your time and now you have access to every single one of them so by all means take advantage of those resources yes um you know you kind of mentioned it but i'd like to reiterate when you're doing that whole systems or all system scan of the vehicle look for network codes or voltage codes ah yeah even if you don't see a problem otherwise yeah that's very and of course that's going to lead you to issues where and the electricity your pin 15 problem here is that what you're talking about another thing is commonly overlooked make sure you look to make sure that the the hold downs the mounting hardware and the battery insulators that the vehicle came with all of it is there it's there for a reason so pete you mean when the redneck is driving down the road and the battery is bouncing up and down yeah that's good of course you're like on my kid's old truck yeah yeah or or to have the insulating casing around there again to protect the battery from the heat in the engine compartment however that's what you you don't just take those off and throw those away if it's damaged you'll replace replaces parts if they're using an insulator for that battery in that vehicle they realize that under hood temperature is very very high and can cause the battery to have a problem okay and bungee cords are not good hold downs because if that thing does bounce a bit you're going to ruin that battery yeah absolutely absolutely all right so then the next step that i like to do is measure ocv open circuit voltage it's just a really quick measurement connected negative negative positive to positive with your voltmeter but i got to throw this in here because you and i are always so passionate about electrical testing properly voltage is not a static thing okay you i can't if i could take the plastic out and x-ray you're not going to see this block inside that's called voltage it's not it's not it's not a static thing i want you to understand that when you're measuring with your voltmeter whether you're just checking the battery voltage or you're doing a voltage drop test or any other kind of voltage measurement you are measuring the difference between one meter lead and the other in potential how can i describe that if you if you went to otech school like i did years ago we used to be taught that that voltage was pressure and you always had the example of the guy with the water hose right with you know water shooting out of it and the reason it's true now is because it's the pressure whoa that's not why it's coming out think about it guys the reason it's coming out the end of the hose is because there's a lot of pressure behind it and very little on the other side of the hose high goes to low right pressure difference that's the pressure differential that's voltage that's what you're measuring you've got one sides got a whole bunch of electrons a lot of potential the other side not so much they want to get together and that potential that's the difference that's it's like reading a map sensor voltage on the engine correct right same kind of thing okay so by the way there's that battery case cover right there yep that is one of them some of them are heavy plastic or whatever and more of a european type setup on this thing here yep and then what does ocb tell you that's directed for the purpose right now that's our state of health state of charge on the battery um oh i wonder where would where would you when you do that before you go any further with your electrical testing what's the minimum number type one in and we'll just start make it easy conventional flooded cell battery like you've seen for years if you measure that and make the the go no go decision to any further testing what is your voltage level preference what would you say is the lower looking for a number yeah what's the lowest you can go before you have to charge the battery and re-test give you a minute to put some numbers in there tick tick tick tick tick tick tick yeah looking for numbers looking pretty looking for numbers this is not dialing for dollars here a few more bucks show was gone a long time ago we got a 12.6 in the 12.65 all right all right so right now we're looking for a conventional flooded cell 12 6 is considered whoa about 90 charged on a conventional cell that's okay i would go for that me personally 12 5 is the lowest i want to see on an initial check and i and i want to caveat that by saying that if i see 12 5 or if i see less well i know the batteries aren't discharged because it's telling me right here at 12 27 it's a 70 percent charge 12 4 is about 75 percent yeah it's about 35 so at the very least i'm going to pull out my battery tester and i'm going to do a little more deeper test to make sure that battery's okay you're going to be amazed at how many issues you're going to be able to tie to a problem with the battery so you've got to make sure that's right first no doubt all right now as the battery is discharged and charged the electrolyte base begins to solidify into plates it's called sulfation we've all heard that term uh it's a crystallized compound and it can't be dissolved and it slowly reduces the plate surface that's available for the chemical reaction and that reduces the battery capacity i can't put some of that special juice in there pete i've seen that stuff sold oh yeah yeah refresh my battery juice right that's right uh this is it's right next to the the blinker fluid on the shelf right and don't don't mix it up with the five hour energy stuff a little bit different um so if you do take your original measurement you might see it's a little higher than that 12-6 number the 12-7 number uh that's just surface charge you know i can't speak for g but for me you know when i'm doing these tests i bring the car in and then i'm going to shut it off i'll turn the headlights on for a couple of minutes and then i'll turn that off and then i'll take my my open circuit voltage measurement at the battery that should take care of the surface right or some of your automatic testers actually tell you you have above a surface charge and they'll tell you turn the lights on or if you have a load tester right you can load it down a bit and if something goes down too quick and bounces up too quick or called battery bounce back you're gonna have a bad battery yeah that's another indication absolutely so if the measurement is below 10 and a half volts we don't have to go much further i mean that's uh that's there's a cell missing and the battery will absolutely need to be replaced there yeah right definitely have a problem now earlier we showed this picture did you catch the mistake made that i got to give a guy's chance what mistake do you see made in this but what's wrong with this picture and i didn't realize i i did this so i made the mistake i didn't know any better okay i can learn a little something what did i do wrong no answers yet yeah there's a little feedback we're going to wait there we can see some there yeah we probably have a 30-something second or more delay that was the previous right here just another minute or two where the voltage is being tested as the first one oh boy i wish i had some of the other guy very good yup where am i testing at i'm on the cable connection you should always take your measurement directly at the battery in this case the top posts themselves if you're doing a side post battery then you've got to take the cables off and measure right at the connection in there you can't measure through that connector very very common in fact another one common mistakes made side post battery taking that measurement there and there's corrosion on the inside that's causing you to get mixed and a good one on that is the cable end or the lug has those little gripping yeah if the gripping pieces that go to the battery itself are all worn down and stuff well number one you need to change that because basically you only have a bolt going through and that's why they did away with side terminal batteries right yeah and you got to get to the battery itself okay yep the battery itself always test directly the battery not the cable lens and this is another important if the battery is mounted in the interior of the vehicle or in the trunk you cannot accurately test the battery measuring at the remote jump posts under the hood that now that is a biggie including doing relative compression from those posts yes that is not accurate because you've got that entire length of cable that could have any kind of amount of voltage drop issues that are certainly going to affect your reading definitely all right test and method number one again these are going to be really brief explanations and then we're going to go on the car and we'll actually do them all right so the very first one is one that i wanted to include it's something that i like to do i call it the down and dirty test it just uses the min max function of your volt meter i'm gonna go ahead hook it up i get my ocv reading if it's over that 12.5 number i was talking about well then i turn on the mid max and i go in and crank the car now i might do that a couple of times and then i'll go ahead and after that second and third shot i'll shut it off and then i'll go out and i'll look at the ratings obviously the minimum reading is going to be my loaded voltage want to be of 9 6 or better on a conventional battery yeah newer cars with like 10 one 10 one on an agm or esp battery and uh and then i'm going to hit max okay that's going to give me an idea of what the charging rate is and we've all been taught 13 and a half 14 and a half right so let me ask you this here's another question for you i got full of questions tonight you're a question man i'm the question man i'm the riddler i'm not batman you're using this technique if you use this technique and you see that your maximum reading is 17.1 volts problem or no it's a problem say yes and if it's not a problem say no well you could put p for problem p for problem and and for now and for no okay i'll like that p n we'll do a g wave p n he's the boss p not a p l p for problem n for no problem if you saw a max recorded voltage of 17.1 volts is that a problem or not a problem [Music] all right so we got a p a lot of p a lot of p p a lot of peas okay now see that's why i said why because he's like i don't want to see a lot of people you know we have the guys that's why you guys come to us because we just got them we're just rattling them off one after the other tonight okay let's see we got uh okay so one guy says i already heard this one i gotta pass on answering because i know the answer [Laughter] thanks don good to see you don i'm glad you came out all right so i'm seeing a lot of peas you know what sorry you would be mistaken right uh when we looked at again we talked about battery management strategies today if you did an rtfi and realized that in order especially star stop vehicles we got to put that juice back in that battery right here right now right quick and this is one of the ways they do that for maybe the first 20-30 seconds they'll have a high charging rate of oh say 17 17 and a half volts yeah seventeen thousand that off i've seen it on my corvette many times because i i leave it sitting for a while i wanna get in it you'll see it go up and it duty cycles that charging rate and then it'll go down yeah reason being the battery has been sitting here a long period of time it sees it's depleted they're going to try to get that battery up to snuff yeah and you notice we got a lot of current sensors on cables nowadays yep so it's like your mechronic system conductive resistance they want to get it in there years ago we would say hey that's a bad regulator you're going to overcharge that battery but it does not do it for a long period of time and that's actually where this popped up when i'm still working in the bays and this was on it was on a jag when and the guy put a new one get the holy water out of jack he saw that and he put alternator on it and guess what it didn't change anything you know because why he didn't rtfi try to read that in people's stress you're gonna hear more and more of this today it's either right or it's wrong hey and you know what they just learned another new thing yeah look at all the peas there and i gotta be honest with you because and i'll get to i'll get you here in a minute there but i got to be honest with you too if you did say it was a problem then you're kind of right because the only way to know for sure is if you go back and read up on the theory of operations that you're testing right okay sorry the same is true in reverse by the way there are a lot of vehicles today that will not charge the battery at all at idle you'll see 12.6 or 12.0 volts right good point good point thanks for bringing that up here so if you couldn't quite hear that ops it's also true you may get no max and you may say exactly yeah you may be under the 12.6 or or below below it yeah um because he just doesn't see that it wants to charge it at that particular point oh yeah for whatever reason yeah all part of the battery management strategy all right all right tesla here's that guy um we're going to talk about this i'm going to show the video and then we'll talk about it right take a listen like this one many shops are still using this tried and true testing method but the question is are they doing it correctly before we can perform this test the battery must be fully charged according to the bci specifications that means a well-arrested voltage of 12.6 but what does well-rested mean what that means is that even after sitting for 24 hours since it last saw a charge no he got it back you just had it there still reading 12.6 volts it's also important to test directly at the battery which requires disconnecting it from the vehicle but before you do so install a memory saver like this one to ensure that the memories of the various control modules remain intact and if the battery is a side post design be sure to use the proper adapters to ensure a good clean connection between the battery and the tester the load test is designed to mimic the electrical loads placed on the battery by the vehicle and rapid heat buildup can occur in the battery especially if the load is applied for too long this could result in damage to the battery even the possible chance of an explosion so always make sure that you wear the proper personal protective equipment a full face shield like this one offers a lot more protection than safety glasses alone to perform the test first determine the cold cranking amperage or cca rating of the battery this information is usually located on the battery label connect the tester and apply a load equal to one half the cca rating for 15 seconds and note the voltage conventional lead acid batteries should remain above 9.6 volts while agm and efb batteries should remain above 10.1 volts all right guys i see you guys make comment about the volume on it okay um and some didn't so i'm not really sure if it was across the board or not if it was i apologize for that uh however you can always access this information on the motorage magazine youtube channel that's where this video is housed and and see it again essentially we're looking at tried and true method of battery testing that's the carbon pile load tester that many shops still use today but as mentioned in the video if you didn't hear it if you read the standard set forth by the battery council international they tell you that that battery has to be a well-rested fully charged battery before testing i always throw this up in electrical classes because well-rested means it hasn't seen a charge for 24 hours and it's still at 12.6 if you're like me i've never had a customer wait 24 hours before i could check sorry mr smith we can't test your battery until 24 hours so i'm not saying that the results you're getting are going to be so far out of whack it's going to affect the end results but it's nice little trivia question to ask and said yes are you doing it right and odds are you're not [Laughter] all right test method number three most used this is actually what g was talking about earlier this is using a conductance style tester conductance style testers are nice because you do not have to have the battery fully charged in order to perform the test this sends a very low ac voltage frequency through the battery and it measures the amount of useful plate material left in the battery that's how it works and most oems and dealerships require this test and printout before they'll warranty a battery under factory warranty so that's number three on the list uh we had a comment come up there i caught that i want to catch two um watch out for anti-seize compound on the connections absolutely i i don't i guess some people put that under better condition but i wouldn't do that because anti-seize compound oh because it's not conductive that's certainly another cause for voltage drop in here in the circuit absolutely and then number four i like this one i'm using a scope to perform a battery starting charging system test and i'll tell you there's a couple reasons why first there's a lot of information as we'll show you in that one little capture and number two what's nice about it is if you're new to scopes um you can you can get away from that excuse i hear so many guys say when they don't use their scope because they have to break it out and get it ready and um unplug the connections in and i tell you this leave it out yeah i mean if you go into your shop what do you do in the morning when you enter the shop you turn the lights on you turn the coffee pot on turn your computers on why not set your scope but turn that on have that ready and go and if you and if you do this i don't care which method that you use again this goes back to to taking care of your customers you should perform this test on every car that comes in your bay i don't care what it's in for you should perform this test on every customer that comes in your bay it doesn't take that long to do either the conductance test or the scope test and either one gives you a nice little printout or a screen capture that you can share with your customer and you may find some problems in there that your customer didn't know about if you're on the other side of this how would you especially folks like where these guys are up here in the north where it gets kind of cold and it's getting to that time of year uh we still got more summer left we're in the 90s today well you ain't yeah you ain't very okay well so next month it'll be cold but anyway when it starts to chill down it takes a lot more for that battery to turn that engine over when your customer like to know if you were the customer that your battery is marginal yeah it starts today but then you're in a hurry to go to work and drop the kids off at school and now you're stuck and it won't crank so this is a very valuable and this is a very easy test yeah looking at this as voltage goes down so you got two leads connected to the battery post positive the negative right that's the red line and an amp clamp around the cable and you can see amperage goes up as voltage goes down and you can read that and if we blow this up a little more we could even kill three birds with one cell oh yeah the voltage the amperage and relative compression of the motor absolutely so what do you say we go over to the vehicle and we'll uh and we'll try these things out yeah all right we'll stop babbling oh one other thing i'd like to bring up people you know on a lot of the uh buttons that uh the power buttons rather than the key some cars are very difficult to do a crank with the button okay they're not all easy like the old days turn the key into cranks yeah sometimes you got to read a different procedure to put it into a crank motor yeah that's a good point i guess we're going to find that out on the mustang that we got to play with so if that works for us all right so we're going to kind of mosey on over here to the car and we're going to start first with our meter and let's see if we can we'll just leave right there because i got the meter in view there right all right so we'll start with that i'm gonna go ahead and hook up the meter to the battery in fact uh we're gonna cheat since we're already kind of plugged in i'm just going to plug in to where i'm at because we have some of these teslas that are set ahead of time to in the interest of time all right so then we're gonna go ahead we'll turn the meter on and we'll give it a little backlight so you can see all right can we see that okay all right so here's your open circuit voltage reading 12.6 good or good or not can we move forward and i'll wait a second yes if we're good to go no if and if we're not while you guys are doing that i'm going to go ahead and select min max and then we'll see if our cranking technique on this 2022 ford works a couple of wides yeah a couple of wise okay yes we're good to go we're above that 12 ready pete yeah go for it all right let it run for uh just about a minute or so [Music] right good shut it up i'll move the camera there you go how's that that's good okay all right so and what you might have heard this this this underlying rory kind of a noise this is a turbo charged engine um which a lot of the new four cylinders are and if you're a diesel guy you may have already kind of recognized that noise but i'm willing to bet that one of the charge air pipes connecting the turbo to the intercooler and back again has got a problem and that's that that may be something loose or broken yeah whatever but it's a rental so i don't care i just give it back anyway all right so we have our meter in now we're going to select the the minimum or we got maximum first we have 14.3 as a max our alternator was doing something yeah so we had some charging going on then we'll hit the min we got 10.5 on a conventional battery so in this case by down and dirty nothing that stands out as a problem that takes care of a testing method number one any questions on that while we gear up for the next one okay i'm gonna need that out yet but i don't think i'm gonna need the leads all right so as pete is changing this over yeah don't let any dead air there buddy oh no dead air is a killer we could have pierre sing a song for everyone [Laughter] all right so now we're going to go to the you do the that the uh whatchamacallit the unit i want to make sure you didn't believe that i'm sorry guys like i said we just want to make sure we get everything covered there and don't miss out anything all right so what he said number two was the carbon pilot load tester that we showed you the video of so we're gonna move on to number three and this is actually the duralast tool i don't know if they i don't know if they still do or not check with your autozone shop because they had some program for shops to get on their door last gold battery line and everything and if you if you signed up for that then you could you could get one of these testers which is kind of cool so like i said they have perfect clamps there you can see pete putting those clamps on they are a perfect size clamp yeah it fits good good expansion especially for today's vehicle all right and this is never says we're going along and give us the output cable that was okay now notice we already have a couple of tenths down on that battery just from that those two starts so we didn't give really enough time to put it back in there again okay so let's see what happens we're gonna hit enter and then we have battery test system test and we're just gonna focus on the battery for now but this will allow you to go and check the starter and and charging system outputs we'll hit battery test and here's key you've got to select the type of battery that you're testing so we go here we've got flooded we have an agm flat plate we have an agm spiral design spiral that's it we have the gel battery start stop that would be the efb all right so we've got a flooded cell battery here so go over that one second pete that start stop is a what that would be the efb efb so you may want to take note of that because notice it didn't come up tell you it's an efb so start stop is efb okay so then the next step we select that now we have to select the rating now a lot of different ratings out there cca is the one that we teach here in the states but there's uh well let's say zero ca is at 32 degrees yeah then there's din which is the giant euro yep so there's different ones in fact we'll just kind of scroll through ca em japanese standard yeah jis the euro standard standard uh that's i guess the european union i think for the iec yeah and then we'll say we're gonna select cca and now we have to select the the amount which you get off the label from the battery in this case it's 590. so we're going to cook that down there we go 590 got it all set hit enter battery temperature that's about right we'll go with that oh thank god it's it's cooler in here than and now we'll test but under the hood it's close enough okay so that gives us the result good and pass and then if we want we can go ahead and print out the result here's the code for the any warranty print result yes oh i have the paper in there oh well well murphy's little things happen right i told you that before yeah there's one okay so anyway that's just a really quick down and dirty uh this is a lot more accurate than doing the first test obviously and quicker and quicker and like i said it doesn't depend on the state of charge um of the battery for us to be able to do that test so i don't have to i don't have to have a well-rested 24-hour waiting period or anything i can go ahead and make the test and let's just show those cables one more time uh these things are important the smaller cables because they could easily get on today's type of battery bigger cables can be a real pain yeah absolutely all right so we're going to set her off to the side hey look there's somebody's mountain dew there hold on that's that's your md there we go all right so i got that and i got that added pumping me that's it okay so now the next one we're going to do is on the scope and let's just kind of put that up for a moment get the screen on there okay this is a picoscope it's a picoscope but you and this is the uh new pico7 um software it is mated to an old pico6 i mean old 30 3000 series pico so it shows you if you have an older one you can always update the newer software regardless and take advantage of the new features of that but i just want to say off the bat uh some basic settings when you're doing something like this now i always go by the 2020 rule and in fact let me pop from the camera real quick and we'll go over that really really quick so um when people are new to using scopes and i'm going to ask for you guys who are watching scope user give me an s give me this if you're not a scope number uh user give me an end whatever which is the ymca and if you're if you're newbie you've been playing around with it give me a p all right so if you use it you're good with it s if you don't and then if you're playing with it give me a p okay that's not it that's who is that y those are yys cool rtfi guys it's like s if you use it anyway that's okay close about that a lot of you guys are so that that's good i'm glad to see that um today there's a lot of things in the vehicle you just can't test without a scope and there are so many things you can test with the scope that are so much more accurate and efficient i'm going to go into that but a lot of questions i get from new users is where do you start setting up write this down because it's on your handout i call it the 2020 rule you know you have to set your voltage and your time divisions correct first 20 that's the 20 volt sweep you want to talk total reading across the the vertical line the voltage scale of 20 volts the second 20 is 20 milliseconds per division so the typical scope that would be 200 milliseconds or about a quarter of a second across the bottom of the screen and these are this is about the time it takes for an engine to complete two full revolutions at idle okay well we're gonna be doing some testings that are at idle they're gonna be cranking and i wanna see a lot more than that so i'm gonna keep the 20 volt and i'm gonna change that time to about 500 milliseconds per division that's going to give me uh about five seconds across the screen when we're done ten times new scopes they're so much easier to use i'd rather put more time and zoom in than not have enough time and have to do the test again so we're gonna start with that okay so we'll go back to the scope and we're just going to focus first on the uh on the battery so you can see we have the 20 volt set up 500 milliseconds per division the one thing we don't have in here yet is a trigger so let's put that in and uh we're just gonna i'm telling you i'm gonna use the single trigger i'll tell you why because a lot of stuff i do is by myself and this way i can set a level the trigger is gonna the scope is gonna start up in capturing the pattern and it'll fill the screen and quit and then i can i'll have it when i go back to it okay so we're gonna set it on single uh trigger we already have on a rising slope so that's fine uh channel a is the source pre-trigger that's where on the screen it shows up the time before that it's going to record i want it in the middle i want to start here on this on the back side so let's get rid of that and we'll put in there 10 and then the threshold well i'm measuring uh a 12 volt battery right so if i start cranking down on that battery it certainly should we saw on the on the dbom test it's going to drop to about 10 and a half so let's say we're going to set this up to a well 11 just for giggles we'll say 11 and let me see i want to change that to a uh and then you're going to be falling slow so let me see if i can do that you're going to be putting a ham clamp on peter well uh not yet so and where are you oh duh sorry guys there we go so i got the falling slope which means that the scope is going to wait for 11 volts or less before it starts drawing a picture all right now i can hit run you can see it's paused there and if we go and crank it mister crank it sir and just like before we're going to crank it and then let it run for a little bit here we go all right hold on hold on good what hold on one more time ready here we go go for it that's what i'm looking for [Music] all right we got it boy that that turbo sounds terrible uh anyway here's where we got our finish on our screen now kind of noisy uh that's okay you we're gonna go ahead first we look here and we can use our rulers to take some measurements i'll tell you what we're gonna zoom in on a little bit so you can see it a little easier and we're just going to come in and kind of take this whole section where yeah so you're going to blow that part right up below that and i want to point out we'll point out a few things as we go all right so very first what we're looking at here on the battery test we can measure this down to where we started before we did anything with the key and we get our ocv measurement okay you probably see it's very barely it's about 12.8 is what we're measuring here uh i may not be totally down on where i need to be in there let's see we're getting that's probably a little closer so we're good there right we continue right and now we're going to look at at the lowest point on there that's the loaded part correct can you see that number it reads 8.9 volts 8.9 volts so i'm going to get back from the camera here i've got another question asked same as before guys good or bad g or b 8.9 volts we just recorded at the low voltage good or bad g or b if you're a scope guy you should be like oh i know what that is come on hit that key and we'll wait for the delay good or bad guys having someone uh someone's been using a scope for 45 years very cool all right some more good or bad so far we got a mix all right all right so here's the point i want to make here guys when you're when you're using your dvom it's a digital tool the scope is a digital tool this isn't like the analog meters that that we grew up with or some of us grew up with many years ago you some of you guys have been like what's the analog meter i've never seen you know it's like it's like the rotary telephones right anyway the reason it's called a digital device is that it takes in that input whatever it's connected to to measure and it takes samples so it's kind of going like this and every time it looks it records that and it puts up that average on the display it's one thing you have to keep in mind using your dvom because you may see a signal that's changing so fast like a pulse width signal and you're not reading the peak voltage you're only reading the average of the low and high so a little tip for the for the worry the scope though is like it is like sampling up to millions of times per second so it's getting a much much better picture of what's going on inside that circuit that's why i personally love my scope what you're seeing here is that microsecond of time where we've completed the circuit we've energized the starter motor and we're getting the power through those those windings and the starter motor is going like and it's got to start moving first its own mass and then the mass of the engine is connected to that's a lot of load so level this is not the loaded voltage that we saw with our dvom because our dvr can't see it that fast you can with your scope and here we call it in rush voltage inrush voltage because it's that inrush of voltage and current in the starter motor to get it going with me so it's a microsecond of time on there and this number write it down on your scope 8.5 8.5 is the bare bones that i like to see it go anything lower than that and it's failed to test okay and when we do the current we can actually demonstrate where you'd actually see the loaded voltage if we have time all right so there we are there so we'll go back to the scope we got that one finished and then note here how it's actually on a rise do you see that here through this section of the pattern we're actually starting to turn the engine over now and then also we got the engine running you all need to start spinning and it starts to return back in what it took out so let's see if we can get just a peek at what we have on the screen yeah you got that's about uh right there 13.7 13 8 yeah and what i want you to look at here guys is that again we only have like five seconds of time on the screen look how quick we got up to that level this should not take a lot of time not a lot of time so you want to look at that all right everybody go with that so far any questions nope looking good here now here's something else that we want to do gene mentioned it earlier while i got my zoomie out i can actually go right here to the voltage line and look at it a little better and i'll tell you what i'm going to cheat a little bit and gonna smooth that puppy out i'm just gonna put a little filter on it right there real quick and we're gonna we could go into more in this but you see how this pattern is kind of wavy it's got little rounded humps along it did everybody see that now it's going up because that original slope was going up but if we were steady which we can look at later or if we have again we have the time but you know what are you looking at here it's every time that piston is going up and down well not just that but it's the ac ripple it was running here yeah this is the ac ripple that's coming being produced at the alternator now that makes sense because the alternator produces ac let's see and there's a rectifier assembly made of diodes i think these six diodes typically in the pack that are responsible for pretty much kind of clipping off the peaks if you ever saw an ac sine wave it's kind of like this and what we're doing with that rectifier which is kind of clipping up the peaks and that's our dc voltage that we can send to the system you need to take a look at this especially if you're facing a drivability issue here's another question for you i know the freaking i'm sorry questions full of questions this guy yeah what if for you know what is the maximum amount of ac ripple allowable what is the maximum amount of ac ripple allowable now remember this is not your father's owns movie remember i said you might learn something that you didn't know before so tell me let's see what do you guys think what is the maximum amount yeah what is that hey david i've seen him in a while right a quarter of a volt davis says quarter of a volt anybody else what's the maximum allowable it's more 0.5 5.5 500 millivolt over half you know 500 millivolts is the correct number that that we're looking for in terms of what you've always been taught right no more than 500 millivolts peak base to peak is what we've all been taught that's not true anymore uh some research has been done that shows because of the new alternator designs you could have as much as a volt difference peak to base to peak and not have a problem with excess ac ripple the the key now is what's called the the stator to rectification proportion what you want to focus on when you're looking at your ac ripple pattern is is it uniform is it a nice rounded series right or the diode goes usually it depends on the spikes they like either spike down or be missing if it has abnormalities in the pattern well then you probably have a problem in terms of your ac side of the alternator okay so there you go there's right just with that that's another new one i learned today um now what we could do is since we're set up for it is just a real really really quick because we always like to look at the current side of things don't we so let's uh and all we're going to be doing is adding a high current probe okay he's setting this up now on the second channel and he's gonna put this around make sure you got a good nine volt battery in there by the way yeah let's see if i can if we'll get through the installation that's why i always put tape on mine right and always have extra nine volts around so you can see the clamp back there and uh mr truly would be so kind to crank her up hang on i'm just getting a picture of the oh okay sure the clampy back there there we go now one thing too when you zero these things you should zero it where you're going to put it right and not not up on your workbench um that's one of the nice things about that new 4425a where the probes actually connect and are powered directly by the the scope module but it you can do this with any scope any clamp all right all right wait a minute we're ready hold on yeah we go for it go all right that's a nice pattern that came out very nice the the voltage pattern cleaned up quite a bit because i think we saw the filtering on that one that's okay so you can see i'm going to drop the current so we can see it a little better and that intersection of the blue going down right where the little yellow trigger is at the blue going down we see the current go up from zero if you read the right side of the screen and if i'm the eyes are not mistaking me i hold yeah because five something's the last thing i see on the side there so you would normally not see this on a regular avr old amp volt tester right but reason why we're seeing such a high number on the little four banger is because we're able to capture this time a lot quicker than you absolutely just like with the voltage it's that microsecond when every the starter shot again everything moving we've got to go from nothing it's the inertia of the whole thing and and just like we call it inrush voltage this is current right so in amper indus current the 600 amps that's not a concern perfectly fine perfectly normal okay um so i wasn't gonna ask that question i saved you one but uh i'm gonna i'm gonna show you this as well but let's go back to that pattern and show them oh once you blow it up yeah just wait a minute just hang on he's gonna rush me here he's hungry she wants to go to dinner usually i'm waiting on him you know he's waiting on me so i want you to come here i'm gonna if you look carefully you can see i'm bringing the voltage uh cursor down to right across where we know that the engine's uh turning over but has not yet started that's where you see it yeah eleven what are you eleven one there about eleven one there now if i bring my measurement here kind of in line with that on the current pattern okay now we're measuring about 250 uh 250 amps or so yeah that is what you would call a more conventional starter current draw battery loaded voltage those are the numbers that you're used to seeing and if you recall we got like it was 10 and a half or so when we did it with the voltmeter so if we were to try to clean that up around the same just kind of close what that intersection is and and this is what you have i mean i i like to play with my scope so forgive me no don't tell us personal things pete will you okay but then again you can see we're looking that's that's what you your conventional training telling you about loaded battery voltage starter starter draw this is where where you get those numbers from okay and now to elude what my good friend was trying oh sorry one more thing there one more thing you got it and i'll get to you uh we'll get these out of the way i want you to notice that here you can see on the current pattern i'm going to bring it all the way down the bottom right and that's showing it says a negative number okay 30.25 amps notice that this negative number is not really negative in the sense that when you see the pattern orientation that current draw right is going up no the the probe is not aligned the way it should be to really truly portray on the scope right what's going on current draw which should be down but we've all used to see this way for so long it's kind of the accepted norm for us so we're looking at that peak high and now we're looking at that that far right where it's settling down at that minus that's really a plus number and that is the amount of current that is being the net amount of current that's being sent through the charging system you want to see again this be replenished fairly quickly letting us know that the battery's been re recovered and it's on its way to being filled back up again and you also look at the number on this because if it gets excessively high then that's a good indication that there's a sulfation in the battery something you may not pick up with the other testing methods but what i would look for here is you have a customer that you know is having complaints about putting on a lot of alternators or you've had a problem you think the alternator is bad you keep sending it back every six or seven months it may not be the alternator if you have a sulfated battery it's requiring that alternator put out more than it's than it wants to yes it might be rated at 150 amps it's not designed to do that for any length of time it's it's more designed for that small amperage load over that period of time the other thing you're seeing in this capture is a result of the battery management strategy when you're seeing such a high current initially if we let it run a few more minutes that should settle down and be probably under about 10 amps yeah and that's net guys that's what we're taking out and what we're putting in that's what's left over that's the excess that's the number you're interested in okay and then one last thing his next magical act here well next we're not we're not gonna do the whole cranking pattern but i do we do want to point out that because of the scope there's a lot more to see here than just the voltage and i point out the little peaks that you see here these are all the impact of the batteries of the engine's compression as each patient gets up on compression top dead center compression that of course that makes the starter work harder and that's a way that we can do a quick measure of the engine's mechanical health which is one of the first things you should check using a drivability issue by using this method now what we would do there is disable the engine from starting and we would fill the whole screen up for those little peaks and valleys looking for them to be uniform if the engine is cylinders weak then it's not going to take as much current to push it through and you'll see that very quickly and that's a lot less time consuming than to uh yank all the plugs out of a transverse v6 right so this has clear one right sorry i don't know if it does or not i didn't try that it may yeah you want to give it a shot yeah all right give it a shot let's see what happens hold on tell me when you're ready go for it here we go go yeah buddy thank you that's got it see now there you go guys not a drivability class not an engine class but there you go it's called relative compression and you can see that here they're all pretty uniform if we need to know what cylinder is we can tie off one of the coils to use our index and then use the firing order to identify any that are out of whack but the other thing i think that i actually learned from my friend mr trulia was that you don't need a current clamp to do that take a look at this you see the same drops there in the voltage of course you do because when the current goes up voltage is being pulled down so you're looking at the base of this because it's voltage drop and then we're we're seeing the impact again on the cylinders oh is that not good enough for you i got all kinds of tricks up my sleeve let's try this is just real quick as you're checking the battery and it's a good excuse to pull your scope out as pete said doesn't take a lot to do you could give this print out to the customer and as they come in down the road maybe their battery or their engine or their alternator or something's bad that's one way to make money right you know even if you don't want to print it you can do a screen capture of that and send it to them in a text or whatever exactly and if you're not using a good management system okay uh something like auto leap you know you could you could send it through orderly put it in there and text it email it and put it in the customer's file okay now we've done all the manipulation here all i simply did was use the invert function on the tool to turn that voltage pattern upside down now you see it's it's darn near a mirror image of the current pattern right especially if you blew it up yeah especially we blew it up you'd really see that that correlation and again that just shows you that you don't you don't need a fancy scope there's a some really economical single channel scopes out there that will allow you to perform these tests and and you know save yourself some time and speed up your diagnosis okay all right so we're not done yet but we are done with that so we'll turn that part off and now we're going to move on to the starting system okay um we're going to go dive right back into the car in just a moment we've talked about and shown you you can use this technique to check the starter if you zoom in that pattern just before the peak you would actually be able to see where the solenoid is closed you can get a idea of how much current is being drawn across those what the condition is a lot of information you can find in that one capture you can use your conductance tester to perform that starting charging system test so you know we're not going to focus on that so much what i do want to show you and what we both agree would be really good to show you is something is commonly overlooked and that's checking the voltage drop in these critical circuits so let's start by looking at the alt starter motor first now there's a couple ways that we can do that i'm going to set it up on the voltage scale and i like an idea that mr trulia shared with me he said you know what set it on the millivolt scale why because typically these will only measure what about 500 or so 600 is on this 600 on the flute so if i see any reading on there beyond that we got a problem right old means uh you got money coming into your shop yeah all right so we've got the leads already pre-hooked up my red lead here is connected to the positive battery cable down at the starter so i'm going to put that in the black and say why blackbeat because i'm going to reference it to the positive cable on the battery so we can just check that side of the circuit first and these wires we pre-wired it earlier and this happens to be easier card to do lucky on this rental and then we'll just hit the min max and uh we'll go ahead and just crank it uh do the clear flood if you want to do this hold on oh what happened camera move camera move down sorry about that no problem go ahead all right clear flood in it here we go go ahead all right hold on all right so i missed hold on hold on all right so i am not i must have made a mistake here in which lead i picked so we'll verify that i don't want to make that mistake so again when it's live stuff happens that's it that's it all right so i am in oh yeah um and you know when you're doing all these tests you should have all your accessories off so double checking the wires that's why no hold on it's okay i gotta follow my voice again you know when things happen it's like being in the real shop right it happens all right absolutely so that was my error because i had this set up on the ground side so we'll move that puppy in the meantime we're just moving a lead from the ground side to the positive side so we can make sure basically what we're trying to do is make sure we're on the positive side at the battery positive side is the load so at the load it's going to be the positive terminal with a big the big wire comes down cable wire comes down oh wait a minute let's see that's so he's just playing switch the wire game yes playing to switch the wire game um any questions in the meantime about an aftermarket dongle in the dlc connector creating the draw so maybe jerry you want to talk about that okay oh yeah parasitic draw uh a dongle in the uh aldo uh yeah the 16 pin obd2 connector it's never a good idea to have anything in there when the vehicle is driving yes insurance companies would like you to put it in there a lot of them are getting away from that because of liability okay the obd2 connector was never made to constantly have something in it to take data from uh as you know if you plug your scan tool in and you go in to the brake system what happens to your abs it's not functional so there have been there's some lawsuits going on from different companies that their dongle was in the diagnostic link connector and it caused an issue whether it be a stall out or a braking problem so that can cause a parasitic drawer as well not a good idea to do other things for parasitic draw well a good tool to have is a thermal imager and when we do parasitic draw here you may have read my articles in motor age magazine we always leave the vehicle inside that way it is not sun that is going to make things look bright a bright color that would indicate a draw and there's no heat on the car so even in the winter it would all be evenly heated you look for something that is bright and again we have many many videos up both on motor age and tsd seminars on our youtube channel besides the tst seminar website so thermal imaging is a biggie and having a good amp clamp now a lot of people try to use the little pdi amp clamps that you can get in a e-scope or in a pico scope kit those are not good enough because they don't have big enough jaw to fit around the cable i like an i 30 s i like it i 30 s like and sam am clamp it will set you back probably 600 but nowadays i think you just went up to over 700 bucks but we've been using it for years and it is super accurate down to 15 milliamps okay and now peter's ready so i could stop i believe so i want to go back and show the guys because it was it was my mistake so many leads under here i got got the wrong was the wrong place all i'm doing here is i'm putting positive meter lead down at the source right the at the um pin where the positive battery cable connects to the starter and then the other is connected to the positive side of the battery so i'm checking the entire circuit path between the b plus at the starter all the way back back to the battery where it's originating so i'm checking the entire positive side of the circuit right now we're reading about half a millivolt and let's see what happens when we clear flood okay here we go all right uh you made me miss it no no we got it never mind all right so there you go um again we're in millivolts i'm reading 145 145 millivolts which is nothing in terms of voltage drop but what i like about it on this side of this by doing one side of the circuit at a time and using the method that mr trulia showed me by by sitting on millivolts if it was over half an amp or so then they would go ol which i in turn is out of luck and that means i know i have a problem on that side of the circuit so that takes care of the power side but you know where most of problem wise it's on the ground side so all i'm going to do is i'm going to switch the leads around a bit the forgotten side and you meant to say voltage not amperage and then we're going to now the reason you're seeing the battery voltage is because i'm on the ground side on one end on the positive side on the other end so i got to move my my other meter lead to the ground side of the battery so i can just check the ground side of the system and while i got that real quick you notice here how the end meter reading is nice and stable if i were to take one out you see it bouncing around a little bit it looks pretty good about about holding its own their others are much more prone to that if you see your meter reading bouncing around when you're doing this test or certainly when you're trying to do a parasitic draw across a fuse that's telling your your leads are not connected uh it's called ghost voltage it should give you a nice stable reading like you see here we'll go ahead and put it back on millivolts now ready to check the ground side crank it when you're ready here we go all right cut it and there you go in that case 110 millivolts nothing wrong with either side of the starter circuit all right you thought you'd start to worry if you had over 200 millivolts but it's always a good idea to check stuff out right no absolutely and i'm going to say this to you guys i'm going to say this too guys when you're doing this this uh any kind of a voltage drop test and i'm sure she will attest to this as well in my experience anyway if there's a problem you're not going to over a few tents it's gonna stand up and bite you in the butt you know it's gonna be there we can easily see it so that's we want to make sure we do that now here's a question for you a car came in on a hook no start you quickly determine starter motor shot so you you do whatever troubleshooting you did to make that determination you're ready to sell the customer starter motor are you done with your diagnostics what about the cables well we just tested them but we had a good starter motor to do that with how you gonna do that if you don't have the good starter motor to do it take a watch ready let's see if you can hear this from beverly now here's the idea behind the test we're going to use this to load those cables down rather than starter because again the starter that's on the vehicle isn't working is this something you can build to your customer can you crank up the point when you're obviously really good you're doing a check on the cables that's the performance that's something you should be able to build for and all we're going to do is we're going to hook this up like i said in place of the starter and then we're going to read the voltage drop across the load this and that's what that little digital meter is going to tell me now that goes back to basic electrical fundamentals doesn't it a good circuit it's a good series circuit all of the available voltage from the battery will drop across the load maybe a few cuts left over and that's what we're looking for so to perform this test we're going to need this and we're going to need a voltmeter connected to the battery up top top let's go and get it set up step by step and we'll show you how this technique works okay now preparation for this test uh again this is a no crank no start towing i've already identified the starter motor has failed on this vehicle but i need to check those cables so i disconnect the power cable down at the start of course disconnected the negative cable at the battery first to make sure i don't arc anything in the process so i've got the bottom already set up the cable going to the starter motor is disconnected now i'm going to set my voltmeter on top with the battery here reconnection so we're just going to start up okay we're going to help you manage this complaining so let's put a little backlight on there so you can see that video and the very first thing i want to read is open circuit voltage is my battery healthy enough for me to test if i read anything personally 12 4 is an absolute bottom line number for me if i see anything at 12 4 or lower then i need to charge the battery and then verify that the battery is indeed good before i proceed but we got a good battery here so we're going to go ahead and receive the test the next thing i'm going to do is i'm going to set my meter to record min max specifically i want it to be able to tell me in a few minutes what the minimum voltage it sees at the battery so i'm just going to go ahead and set that up and now i'm ready to go up underneath the vehicle okay just to recap what we've done to prep so far again no crank no start towed in vehicle have verified that the starter is no good now we just need to make sure that the path between the starter and the battery is okay this is going to be a very high load component a lot of amperage flowing through it just hooking up the headlight bulb across it's not enough we need to put some serious load on it that's what this tool does this tool will apply about 130 amps through those cables so we're not going to use this on every load test we do just here for this starter motor okay now what do we do to prep well i couldn't access the cable when it was connected to the starter without accidentally arcing against ground uh believe me i tried it found out that it wasn't gonna work so i went upstairs i took the negative battery cable loose came back downstairs to remove the cable positive cable from the starter motor and then went back upstairs to take the negative cable put it back on the battery and as you saw i now have my multimeter set on min record mode to monitor the battery voltage upstairs we're just going to replace the starter as a load with this tool now this tool is normally used to check the battery and charging system and would connect directly to the battery by coming down here and going through the cables in the ground well now i'm checking the entire path to the starter motor aren't i i'm including the cables so i should be able to detect any voltage drop through those cables or any additional loss by comparing the two readings that's what we're going for here so all we're going to do is we're going to connect the positive end to the starter cable and then we're going to connect to the starter ground this way i check going through the starter case to the block and then of course the cable back to the battery and i know you can't read this um right now it's reading 12.78 that's within a few tenths of course the battery's dropping a little bit upstairs um what i'm going to do here though the main thing i want to catch is what happens under load so i'm going to apply the trigger i only need to apply it for a few seconds and then read the voltage not trying to do a battery load test i'm trying to stress the cables to see if there's any weaknesses there so here we go 1 2 3 11 10 is what i just read on the digital output now as i mentioned this tool has an analog version that's going to be a little tougher to do this test with but if you already have one you can certainly use it to do this job all right so we'll go ahead and remove this very carefully and then we'll go back upstairs and see where our minimum at the battery is okay so now i'm back upstairs what i want to know now is what did my volt meter in min max mode record as the minimum voltage of the battery all right what we got a reading here is 11.46 volts the 11.46 volts now becomes my standard if you will that's the source voltage that i'm going to use when assessing how much voltage drop occurred over the circuit path and through the load now it just so happens that when i applied the load through that handheld tester i could also read the voltage that was getting to the tester what do we read there 11.1 the two subtracted from each other leaves 0.36 that's the amount of voltage drop that i have in both the ground and power sides of the circuit is that an acceptable amount you bet it is i don't have to go any further but what if i had seen a larger number something approaching a volt or more now i would have to isolate whether it's in the power cable or it's a ground related concern that's easy enough we're just going to move the tester between the two and perform the test again all right uh we're not quite done yet so just forget the questions crazy we'll get that one more time great wait understand that all we're doing is we're using the load tester and jerry's got a few in the shop here um and you probably have yours too it's just just a handheld load tester that you can use to load the cables down and complete your diagnosis uh it sure beats putting that new starter on and finding out that it's not working right or missing excessive drop in the cables that will lead to the early demise of that starter and of course we all blame the starter when that happens so something old is still can be used i mean i wouldn't recommend using these on a battery no okay unless you want to heat a pop-tart on right because or heat your hands up that's what these things will do but good to load the cable yeah absolutely uh a couple questions came up uh one of you guys asked about where we put the leads when we did the test that we showed you with the voltmeter voltage drop is a learned skill and when you are comfortable with it what we're doing here is we're checking one side of the circuit at its time so we have one meter lead on the battery reference to the battery whether if it's the ground side it's gonna be in the ground side uh post if it's on the positive side of the positive side post and then the other meter lead goes to its partner on that side of the circuit whether it be the positive side of the load or the ground side of the load in this case with the starter motor the v-plus table or the casing which answers your question or on the starter case because that's the start of the ground path from the starter back to the battery you'd be amazed at how many issues you've got which voltage drop between the case and the block because it was installed properly and properly torqued corrosion you name it didn't clean the surfaces off a lot of those things impact that and if you have voltage drop what that means guys is that there's a thief in the mix stealing away from the voltage available to the primary component in this case the starter motor so it's not getting everything it needs to work is it going to work right of course not so that's why we want to make sure we make that check excellent explanation all right any other questions that we're wearing so far one more thing i want to do before we call it a knife okay all good and danny all right so the next component we want to verify is the alternator and a back of a step on the starter on the on the solenoid side the key on the switch voltage to the solenoid you can check the voltage drop in a similar manner your solenoid just becomes the load uh same when we're doing the alternator you have the field and of course the alternator assembly itself let's take a look at how to do both the alternator positive and ground sides at the same time so i'm going to set that up well yep so basically on the alternator here we're switching some of the wires okay and we as you can see down here okay there are wires where you see my hand waving hey how's it going okay and pete is getting this hooked up it's going to go to the battery and now he's connecting in over here now what we're connecting into here is the this is attached to the b plus terminal on the back of the alternator that's our positive side of the circuit okay so that's where this one's going okay so that that is the feed side so now he's figuring out where they put the rest of the wires and as he's taking that out one's going to go to the negative side of the battery and you can see he's getting ready to put the connectors there it's positive and negative at the battery all right so now he's piggybacking on that still on the ground but now now he has to figure where's the ground where did i put it this is now the one we're hooking up here is actually the alternator case again just like we did the starter motor that's where that ground path starts and always make sure your wires and stuff are clear any moving parts yeah we're okay we are okay and i want to make sure that i have the right channels in the right place so i'll tell you what just like you would any other time i didn't want to do that all right so uh we're getting the scope ready by accident he hit the exit button but that's okay so anyway i've got a b and d are actually hooked up so we're going to put both of these and we're going to use the standards they said before we're going to have the 20 volt for the voltage part of the 2020 rule and i'll tell you what because we want to trace this out a little bit i'm going to bump up the time bump up the time there good idea and now you can see they're all overlapped here so i want to kind of spread them out here now someone commented also about the leads and uh absolutely right you need a quality shielded set of leads if you're going to do scope work to help protect your your measurements from all that electrical interference under the hood and ion you muted yourself did i mute myself now you're wrong now i'm on thank you guys having all kinds of issues there aren't they he must have been scratching his uh you know what and hit the mute button all right all right so um you can see that that we have well i'll tell you what let's uh let's let's start it up and let it run and we'll see what you want me to start it yeah all right let's hear this noisy mustang again all right so i've got some noise there on the battery i'm going to put a filter on that just to be on the safe side and well you're looking at here and we'll freeze it there let me know when you want me to kill it yeah hold on one second all right you can kill it noisy baby now just like before i have the case ground checking the positive side of the circuit that's the b plus uh between the alternator and positive side of the battery and then we have the ground side also casing on the alternator and negative side of the battery and then the blue that's voltage at the battery itself so we're looking at here we have very little offset on voltage drop on either of the other two channels so that's something you're pretty good and the other is just battery voltage like we looked at earlier we can open that up and you can start to see some of that that's that's hash okay that's not a problem i just want to show that to you because we have some noise in there it could be a connection or something we can check that or or worry with it but i don't want to waste your time with it but we can also use that to check the ac ripple the reason i wanted to show this on the scope and then kind of bring us down to the end is this you could check it with your dv01 but remember i said a long time ago about not being able to get a fast sample rate with your dvl web what if you had a case customer comes in lights are flickering dash lights are flickering deck you know warning lamps are kind of illuminated but they're really dim i saw this a lot of pt cruisers back in the day uh all codes caused by what he said earlier problems from the negative ground strap where it split off and attached to the chassis so you have that voltage drop in the ground side that affects the strength of the field that creates a lower feel like it's a charging output problem if you're connected like you're seeing us do here with your voltmeter you're going to see the average you may miss it but you're not going to miss that with your scope i've got some great capture i wish i should have included those but you're going to be able to see that variation that variance very very clearly on the scope so that's just another feature for that all right so that kind of breaks us down to the end here to our questions you lost your clicker you'll have a clicker well then we'll uh i'm a clicker loser all right anyway we want to make sure that we thank our friends at duralast for making this possible yes thank you for you guys hey do us a favor you know let the folks that you are allowed to start they're going to kind of look at you like what but let's do store no hey you know you guys did this for us we appreciate it check out their line of equipment and then we've got the next one up here just to let you know if you haven't heard it already if you want to see myself and mr truly in person we're going to be at the embassy suites in rosemont illinois that's just outside of chicago and along with our two friends yeah scott brown and brandon steckler yeah so this is a forfeit all day long hey hey watch it family show it's october 15th guys uh you can't come out and see us come out and meet us it's www.theword accelerate dashconference.com and i think you're gonna i think we're asking it's under 200 bucks is what the rate is to come out and see this but let's what's gonna happen you're gonna get fed in the morning you're gonna have four that's four well three talented presenters and me [Laughter] presenting classes for you that day let me tell you what seeing this guy seeing scott seeing brandon just by themselves is worth the price of admission we're gonna feed you lunch uh and then at the end of the day we're gonna have a meet and greet maybe some pies and some cold ones and get a chance to hang out and talk a little bit after the conference is over and we're going to have some sponsors there who are going to be exhibiting give you a chance to interact in between sessions uh with these different companies find out what's new what's exciting got some issues you want to talk to them about whatever the case might be it's going to be an excellent opportunity for you to do that as well yeah so come out and see us you'll get to see all four instructors today uh someone called me up actually kenny sanders he had someone interested in coming to this event and i was told originally you're going to see all four of us are they all going to be four hour classes no but they'll be long enough with good information that you will know it's worth coming out to see all of us all right and the next step on the list there then i got to give myself a plug here oh so if you want to come to an electronics class october 3rd 4th and 5th it's a three-day hands-on class we go out from 8 in the morning to 4 30 or perhaps you want to come to the ev hybrid class or hybrid ev class this one you better rest up for because we start early 7 in the morning and sometimes we don't end to 10 30 11 o'clock at night on friday and saturday sunday we always get everyone out of here by four um you know electric vehicles are coming important thing to do been doing it for years so we want to thank you guys for coming out and up and i don't oh can you back up to number 36 here for a minute i think it's where i missed this one right yeah yeah okay yeah and it'll start here in a minute hey guys i'm going to put this up here because we want to make sure we do acknowledge our sponsor for making this happen and press and play oh why not when it's done oh maybe let me try it this way try it right there yeah was that a problem well it's going give it a few give a few seconds yeah i know there was some blank here bad edit bad bad edit maybe i had a really bad edit oh there we go okay 20 seconds in we're good starter or alternator what'd you do i was trying to play it here well i guess i can't make it bigger you got it just just put it back where you want we're playing it for now i've got to be playing with things don't you that's it rather that should be pretty darn close there you go verified that the starter or alternator is indeed bad make sure that you replace it with a quality dependable component like those offered by duralab duralast alternators and starters are triple tested and remanufactured by tier one manufacturers not just rebuilt that means all components sub-assembly and end units are tested and replaced with new wear components and if you're looking to offer your customer a completely new unit the duralast gold line offers 100 new starters and alternators both duralast lines are engineered and tested to meet or exceed oe specifications for form fit and function including amperage or torque output and if a known defect is present in the oe design duralast engineers address that defect so you and your customer won't have to they also come back to buy a full nationwide warranty including roadside assistance okay we can go back to the last shot we got that done well let's think or um yeah so let's say yeah and we had a question about the handout can you back that up to uh up the top there so you can get that link uh right there so as those you asked about the handout it's a copy of the presentation uh bit dot lee forward slash battery webinar you can download it from there and let's see i think there were a few other comments we want to make sure we address um the ram 50 v8 you're asking about the screen in the die bench i'm not really sure which one you're talking about the little rolling cart we have in the background is just a simple monitor on the rolling cart but if you do some googling or get on some of the facebook automotive technician groups a lot of guys have built their own you know with a rolling cart and a you know tv monitor mount and then just made that their diag cart it's a really good idea you keep it all in place now the guys here they've got the snap-on set up which is also very very nice but we do use that cart um over there yeah and another one but on facebook i know there's definitely a couple of groups i think i don't know if it's mario or whoever but quite a few or mockham does one uh he has a real nice card where he has a tv in the background so check them out you could buy whatever brand cart you would like and put a nice tv at a probably a 32 inch or more yeah monitor and bingo you're ready to rock and roll yeah especially if you buy touchscreen some of you guys have really gotten uh i mean really inventive in how they set those up so you know your imagination is your only holdback um hey wrapping it up guys thanks so much for for coming out and hanging out with us tonight thank you um we know that we had in the first half we had a lot of yeses for you knew something new so i'm going to challenge you with one more question and then we'll call it today he's a q major we're in the second half you know we did a lot of the on car testing if you uh pick something up in the second half you didn't know before hit me with a y and and you know what let us know uh if you if you really liked some of you already said so thank you for those comments so if you if you did we met our promise and you walked away with here with at least one thing new but a y and then we'll wrap it up for the last question here yeah one question uh wanted to know if the big jaw implant would work with the zeus yes yes short version any any amp clamp will work with it it may not have the preset settings inside there but you could always do every 100 millivolts equals one amp and to snap on benefit i mean they make their own design for their scope that that does have that in their drop-down menu so either way you go but you're not limited to that so right you can use it we use it on the zeus all the time so once again i want to thank you if you think this was good and was worth your while because he said a different letter give us the letter g like me give us the letter g if you thought it was good if you thought it was bad and you got nothing out of it we wasted your time which we hope we did not give us the letter b b if it's stunk it was bad you you don't like us the letter b g if it was their name thank you so much we really do appreciate hey i had fun on saturday night it was a good night hey i made you do all the talking which is really nice that's kind of like strange yes save my voice which is uh hurting around okay all right what's that saying again one more thanks to the folks duralast making the night happen thank we will not be here in september but we will be in october so stay online for uh uh the date and time for that of course it'll be on saturday at six just like now and uh keep you'll find out when either by email or or notification or have you learned about this one you'll find about that one and don't forget take all the advantage of the learning platform that you're on now under motorists there's a ton of stuff there for you to take advantage of and with that i'm gonna say goodnight goodnight goodnight goodnight and god bless thank you

Channel: TSTseminars

Views: 4,807

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Id: qKRjWIWJIXA

Length: 147min 32sec (8852 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 12 2022