Took truck to body shop, got it back, battery keeps dying

Truck in question is a 2013 Toyota Tacoma LB 2x4 DC limited edition with the tow package.

I took my car into the body shop to get it repaired because I was rear ended in a minor fender bender. I dropped it off this past Monday. I got it back yesterday, Friday. I drive it to my work, turn off the truck, go into the shop to do a few things, get back into truck drive about 5 miles and park. I go to help someone, come back to truck, start her up and I hear her cranking over like it's hesitant to start. That's weird I say to myself. I drive back to the shop, park, go into the shop do work for a few hours and come back. On my way home the truck starts ok. I go to the post office, park for 5 minutes, come back and she's dead. I get road side assistance through Toyota so I call that in and they come in 70 minutes.

He uses his booster pack and I'm up and running. He tells me drive around for half an hour to charge the battery back up. I drive around for a good 45 minutes wasting gas and I park. I get stuck again. Luckily someone had jumper cables and got me going again.

I get home last night and I put my multimeter to good use and under charge while running it's around 13.4-13.8.

Once I kill the engine the battery is clearly starting to drain. I can hold my multimeter and it goes down and down, and down again until finally it hits around 10v and does not drain any further.

The weird thing is I can actually get the truck started again after cranking it once or twice and then finally cranking it long enough it starts up without any other assistance.

The body shop replaced my rear bumper and also transferred the rear backup sensors to the new bumper.

The body shop is going to receive a call shortly but what I'm trying to find out is is my battery dying? Or is it just not receiving a full charge? What steps would you guys recommend I take next besides the obvious of contacting the body shop to do me right.

Edit Forgot to mention that I removed the positive terminal and I still saw the battery draining.
Edit Forgot to mention and I'm not sure how I forgot this but they also did work to the front bumper. It was scraped so from what I can tell they removed the front bumper to sand/prep/prime and paint it. I'm guessing they would have had to remove the front passenger side headlight to get to the bumper.

 

Sometimes a bodyshop will remove a battery cable from the terminal while working on the truck.. ie, doors opened all day, airbag.

Try tightening the terminals up real well and see if that is the issue.... the tighter it is, the better the connection.


Parasitic drain a another bitch of a problem.

 

Gotcha, that's what I figured. I saw that my positive terminal was adjusted which looked pretty obvious that they had removed that to work on the truck. I tightened it up a little but if you say more the better I'll really tighten it well. You think the rear backup sensors could be wired wrong and lead to parasitic drain?

 

The rear sensors should only come in when in reverse.. so I would think that would be a very far off possibility. Wondering if it was "drained" while in the shop, and never got fully charged yet from the amount of short driving that you did. If you have a battery tender, I would trickle charge that battery full, and see if the problems persist.

Don't personally know how long (driving) it takes to charge your battery back up. Would think your 45 minute drive would be plenty, but I don't know. ..

 

Did the body shop have the tail lights and or tow package plug out? could be a pinched set of wires some where causing the drain, It is also possible one of the battery plates inside the battery may have been jarred lose when you were hit from behind. just my .02.

 

hopefully they didn't pinch a wire somewhere and cause a parasitic drain.

 

I've never had this happen at the shop I work at. It was probably just drained while it was being repaired and then the short drives killed it. Combined with the cold this is the most likely cause. Give it a good long drive and see what happens

 

First get the battery load tested. Any auto zone can do that. If good, you need to find out what circuit is doing the draining. Attach the MM to the battery and start pulling fuses, when the voltage goes up, you found the bad circuit. I would suggest starting with the trailer light circuit. Rear end accidents often damage the trailer plug wires.

Good luck and report back.

KO

 

Just a thought, is there any chance the 400w inverter is running, it sounds like it is on because the safety kicks in around 10v.

 

It could be. You either have a bad battery or a cercuit that pulls lots of amps is shorted out.

Pull the fuse and you will know.

 

So I bought a battery charger from Sears and am doing the trickle 2a charge right now which will probably take 14 or so hours according to the battery charger manual. I'll report back with what happens. I'm not getting my hopes up since I drove around for a bit yesterday and the battery still died again.

 

I'm a little stupid but where would I find if it's running?

 

Charge it overnight with the ground cable disconnected, then measure the battery voltage 1/2 hour after shutting the charger off. If its below 12.5, replace the battery, could /should be warranty. If its above 12.5V, have it load tested.

 

Silly question, is your serpentine belt still there?

 

There isn't any thing back there that does not go off with the key including the battery charge circuit for the camper. Time to get some one to do a drain test and start pulling fuses.

 

Thanks guys I'll charge it overnight. As I was pulling fuses I lost a fuse down in one of the plastic areas near the brake pedal fml.

 

I believe it is still there.

 

True, its very possible the impact caused an open or shorted cell, or cracked the case causeing a loss of electrolyte, but it might be a hassle getting it added to the insurance claim if there's no clear-cut damage like a cracked case.

 

I'm pretty sure that the fuses that you want to check, are the ones in the fuse box next to the battery. Most of tje fuses in the fuse box in the cab are usually low wattage.

Pull that lid off and start looking for fuses labeled for the trailer and the power inverter.

 

Hey thanks for the help man, I actually did both areas, pulled every fuse except for the 100a and the 140a as those are hard as fuck to remove but those are the only two that I did not remove to test. It's sitting pretty at 10.7v right now. The strangest thing is I can get the truck to start after cranking it once, let it sit, cranking it one more time and then a third time just holding it a little longer it cranks and starts up fine.