99 Silverado,4wd 1500. New battery approx 2 years ago. Don't drive the truck that much. 4 times in the last year, have gone out to use truck, battery dead, 6.4vdc.Can drive it for 5-10 miles, park it,next day dead. Put a charge on it, no problem for maybe 2-3 months. Terminals clean, battery good, no known external load on battery. Any ideas? Thanks for any input, Shep

 

You have a continuous drain on your battery from the electronics on your truck, plus batteries will slowly discharge over time even if not connected to anything. You need to drive it more often or charge the battery with a charger maybe once a month. A 10 mile drive will not recharge a dead battery. Get your battery fully recharged and then tested for capacity. You might want to completely disconnect your battery if you don't drive but 4 times a year. A periodic recharge, especially in freezing weather would still be recommended. All of this assumes your charging system is working properly.

 

SLJ, no, I don't drive it four times a year(if I could afford that, I'd be an engineer!). It has happened 4 times in the last year! It's sat 2 weeks and started right up, have driven 400+ miles; two days later sitting,battery dead. I know there's a constant drain; but enough to drain battery in day or two. Don't believe thats right??????????

 

Sorry Shep, I mis-read your first posting. I think I would completely recharge the battery and then have it load tested. It may be starting to short out internally. If your battery went dead in 2 days that is a large parasitic drain or a battery problem. As I said this all assumes your charging system is working properly.

 

Steven, I have a similar problem with my 1993 Cevy 2500 4x4. I have mesured the constant drain with a VOM as 2.25 amp. and have systematically removed all the fuses with no effect on the drain. This drain first occurred when I tried to reset my clock radio time to DST and it locked up the radio so it would not play or read time. Any suggestions as how to find the current drain? Thanks, Pete