Battery Issues/Questions

Ok guys, get ready. Cause this is gonna be long.

The main problem I am having is that my battery wont hold a charge for more than a couple days. The secondary problem is that my belts won't stop squealing like a banshee, but I'll get to that in a minute.

When trying to figure out why the battery wont hold a charge, I started with the easy stuff. The alternator is new, and checks out fine. Everything from the distributor to the spark plugs are all new. A friend of mine told me it might be the negative battery cable.

My first major question has to do with the negative battery cable. The old one is completely shot, so I got a new one. There is only one problem. The original goes from the negative post to the engine, which makes sense. What I am concerned about is this:

Attachment 11988

From this pic you can see where it connects to the engine (blue square) but it also is connected to the frame and the wheel well. The new cable doesn't have places to mount this way, which I was told will work by they people at Advance isn't needed. So I figured I would ask yall about it before I hooked the new cable up and turned the car on.

This brings me to the belts. About a month ago, my old belts started to squeak a little bit. So I decided it was time to get new ones. The new ones proved to be EVEN WORSE. Like 100% worse. So, my thought process is that a slow leak is getting on my belts, causing them to slip and squeal, which is causing the alternator to not charge my battery correctly. The only problem with this theory is that I have known about a slow leak of some kind since I owned the car. The coolant leaks very slowly, as does the power steering and the oil. All three are slow enough to manage until I can find the time and the money to really get in there and fix the problems. The water pump is new, with a new gasket. The oil pan gasket is new. So I have no idea where those leaks are coming from. All I do know is that after cleaning the engine and surrounding parts, after about a week the bottom of the engine (and surrounding parts) are all wet. Sometimes its coolant, sometimes oil. I can never really tell. The dirt and filth are ingrained in the metal by this point (the guy before me did not take care of this car). But the problem is that I have been fixing the leaks over time, and the belts/battery have had no issues up till this point. So I have no idea what is happening.

Belt tensioner shot?

I took the belts into Advance to see if they where bad from the start. TURNS OUT the dingle berry that sold me the belts gave me one that was too thin. I needed a 15mm belt and I was sold a 13mm one. Im going to a specialty store tomorrow to get the mounts for the negative lead and ill let you know if the squeal went away.

Take a piece of wax (like a candle) and touch it to your running belt, letting a little to melt on the belt. This should temporarily stop the squeal if it is the belt. If you still hear a squeal, see if it is a bearing as was suggested earlier. How many miles on the truck? You might want to re torque your valve covers and see if that cuts down on oil leakage, easy thing to do. Good luck!

you need the negative cable to connect to the body, frame and the block - the idiot at Advanced doesn't have a clue about these trucks. That is how all the metal in the truck is grounded, without the body ground, lights, gauges and even the starting and running of the vehicle will be affected, possibly to the point of nothing working. Even worse, if a high draw item needs a ground and doesn't have one, it will find a path even if it is high resistance, melting metal and starting fires. Get a piece of 0 or 1/0 gauge wire, terminals to fit, and make a new set of ground cables - from battery to body, body to frame, them frame to block, cleaning all attachment points and using dielectric grease to prevent corrosion.

any updates

Yep. I took the belts to Advance and it turns out they sold me the wrong size. It was too thin and not catching the pulley right. They replaced the crappy $6 and upgraded me to a belt that was around 25 bucks for free. As soon as I put the new belt on and started it up it was nothing but engine sound. No squeal. It was glorious.

The battery hasn't had a single problem since then, even with the old negative cable still on. I have a new one, I'm just waiting for a weekday off so I can go pick up some things from a specialty store.

Not sure where I want to go from here though.

ok good to hear,I am always around winter park but i dont think i have seen your truck

You would know it if you did. I'm missing a fender, have a skull and lightning bolts on my hood, and a straight pipe. There is a reason her name is Slagathor the Slaughter Wagon.