2000 Sterling no start, security system?

Mitch504

Well-known member
Is there a chance a 2000 Sterling has a security system that kills it if the batteries go dead?

I am working on a 2000 Sterling medium duty (26,000 gvwr) for a friend. It has a small Cummins in it, can't see the tag for a bunch of hoses etc, could be a 5.9 or a little bigger. It has a one piece head and valve cover appears to be black plastic. Anyway, the engine size is probably not important.

Truck was running fine, had batteries less than a day old, when it was parked at my shop. I was replacing some of the plastic dash structure for a friend. It's been sitting about 60 days. Somebody played with the lift gate and killed the batteries stone dead. I charged them up and they are holding a good charge. When you turn the key on, it sounds like a main relay cycles over and over, behind the right side of dash. The voltmeter goes up and down about one volt, the engine fluids light, wait to start light, stop engine light, and engine warning light all flash rapidly. Measuring voltage from the frame to the starter end of the hot cable I get 12.8 with a very slow drop over a few minutes of a couple of tents of a volt, so no real load when start is pushed. I have been burnt a few times by cars that had security systems designed to kill everything if the battery is disconnected, so I thought I'd see if this thing might have something like it.

Has anybody run in to this before, or do I just need to put on my big boy pants and chase this problem down?

Thanks, Mitch
 

Mitch504

Well-known member
Well, this was a strange one, battery cable badly corroded and broken where the terminal was crimped on. Evidently it carried enough juice when it didn't have the load of that main relay, but, I didn't lose power to accessories, even when the starter was activated.

I guess this was another triumph for logical, methodical, troubleshooting. It took me about a half hour to find and fix it when I got back to it, but, I'd have never found it by bouncing from guess to guess, cause it sure didn't act like any of the thousand other bad battery connections I've fixed.
 
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