Battery troubles
 

In a nutshell, the last two times I've gone out of town for a week my 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee's battery has died while I was gone. Both times a general 10-minute jumpstart was all it needed to get going. The first time was interesting because it would die if I took my foot off the gas, but it righted itself and worked after what I figured was being fully charged.

This time, I returned from my week and a half long trip and the battery was dead again. I jumped it, got home, let it sit for a day, and now it's again dead, which is the first time it has done so on such a short period.

My question is, are these symptoms of a bad battery or of a more serious problem, like the alternator? The batter is a nice Sears battery from about two years ago and I've never run it to the ground from leaving the headlights on and such so I figure it should still be pretty solid.

I need to pick my girlfriend up from the airport this evening and I'm about to head to Sears to just buy a new one but I'm not positive if it's that simple. If so, I wonder if I can have them replace it on defect.

Many thanks for any advice.
-T

It could be a defective battery, but a normal battery will not crap out after only two years unless something is wrong.

It could be your voltage regulator, which controls how the battery is recharged, so if the regulator is bad, it doesn't recharge and will always run down.

It could also be a bad alternator, same idea, it recharges the battery and if it doesn't work, the battery runs down.

A decent and honest trouble-shooter should not have too hard a time finding which it is.

my edit: maybe "worst case" as far as finding it, is if you have a weird electrical short circuit causing this, since they could be hard to find.

Thanks for the hasty reply BadNick.

I got antsy and got a ride to Sears already. I had the maintenence man but it on the deep charger after he read it at only 5-volts and it wouldn't take a charge. Thus it was indeed defective and was replaced, for free, right then and there. What an awesome system. Go Sears! ;)

Thanks again

I'm glad you found it and had it corrected for FREE no less!

I assume you didn't mean anything "negative" but "hasty reply" sounds like a bad thing like I just threw some bs at you, when in fact I contemplated my analysis and my suggested solutions over a long hard sitdown on the john.

No no! By "hasty" I meant that you replied to my post "very quickly" in that I was in need of help and here was a great reply in less than 2 hours after I posted! I'll be sure to not use the word in that fashion in the future ;)

Thanks again.