Volt Question on truck. Battery Charging

I seem to find out my battery is dead only when my truck starts beeping at me saying LVD Emergency Cutoff which means the truck battery is dead. It saves enough juice to start the truck but I don’t like getting that low.

I try not to idle the truck because my company gives us $180 a month if we keep our idle below a certain percentage.

so my question is when I turn turnkey to the position before starting it and look at my
Volt meter on my dash. At what number should I start the truck up to charge the batteries and at what number is the truck finished charging and it’d be okay to turn it off?

I drive a 2020 Kenworth T680 if that matters.

 

Anytime it gets under 12.0 volts you’re pushing your luck. Especially in colder weather. I’ve started mine at 11.8 volts but there wasn’t much left in it.
If your truck had an ammeter gauge, you just run it until the gauge read closer to zero amps, then it would be charged.
With a volt meter only, hard to tell.
I’d give it two hours to be sure. No less than 30 minutes at least.

 

If everything is working right, volts should be around 14. If the amps is up around +75 or so when the volts are below 13 or so, then it shouldn’t be an alternator problem. If amps are low too, then probably need a new alternator.

 

A good battery, without the truck running, should read no less than 12.3v. With the truck running, if the alternator is working properly, between 13.5 and 14.5.

 

Well what matters more is why are you ending up with dead batteries in a short time?

 

I’ve been in about 5 different T680’s and all of them struggled with low voltage. I’ve had my company replace all the batteries and it’s normally good for about a year then the low voltage warnings tend to start coming back. Maybe try a higher output alternator ? They normally come with 160 amp. Maybe 180 , 190 or 230 amp alternators could help. My company stopped using AGM batteries because they said they weren’t cost affective.

 

Don’t equate a larger alternator will solve the problems.

First this sounds like there needs to be preventive steps, so the company needs to have the terminals cleaned annually or better yet every quarter.

second the company needs to think about getting a maxwell start module, a recommendation for all trucks.

what puzzles me is what do you guys run that flatten the batteries over night?

 

Hey, it gets lonely....

 

It doesn’t seem to be driver specific but truck specific. Every T680 I have had has had this issue.