battery light, no radio or gauges

[busadave]

Hey everyone, I was coming home today and the radio started dying. Only for a couple of seconds and would come back on. A couple of miles later it died and the battery light started flickering and the speedo and tach needle started falling. Truck was running and a couple of seconds later both gauges went back to normal. I have been reading the threads about batteries and alternators but none mentioned the gauges acting up. What would you guys suggest i start checking???

[Fantom]

Sounds like you need a new alternator

[busadave]

Afraid of that. Going to take it off this afternoon and have it tested. If it shows good it still may not be, correct? Sounds like quite a few test okay only to be replaced later.

[busadave]

Local Ford dealer said the alternator is charging. They told me to check all of the battery connections and if that didn't work to bring it in and let them go through it...

[20046.0]

Originally Posted by busadave

Local Ford dealer said the alternator is charging. They told me to check all of the battery connections and if that didn't work to bring it in and let them go through it...

You get any codes?

I would be driving and my gauge cluster, radio and window controls would fail. My battery light was also on. I was getting an overcharging system code, regulator is alternator was bad.

[busadave]

clear of codes. he did mention that the regulator may be sticking or going out. driven the truck a couple of times since the battery cable cleaning and nothing yet. I'll keep an eye on it and see.

[slickrick40217]

This same thing happened to my 2006 just last week and it turned out to be the alternator.

[MPDAVIS1]

Same here...... 110 amp alts can't handle the stress of charging the batteries while running components on the dash and such.... Low amperage can lead alot of problems like FICM failure, killing your batteries and other major things as well.... The reason we had no lights and dash and such was because the alt won't charge the batteries until the glow plugs switch off, if you noticed it won't really happen until the engine temp was up then the problem was low alt amps. AS 135amp mid output amp is the answer.

[MPDAVIS1]

Can be cause by a failing alt as well obviously, how ever mine problems were because of an undersized alt.

[MPDAVIS1]

Originally Posted by 20046.0

You get any codes?

I would be driving and my gauge cluster, radio and window controls would fail. My battery light was also on. I was getting an overcharging system code, regulator is alternator was bad.

Your symptoms are the exact same that my truck was producing from and undersized amp! I bought a 135 amp online to correct the problem.. Cheap fix