What happened to today???

This was meant to be an easy day; pick up some tenants and escort them to a cash machine for the rent, go back to the apartment and continue putting it back together.

What ended up was breaking down in the parking lot of the bank with the big truck, spending 2 hours phaffing around getting 2 new batteries for the truck, then rounding up more rent, then going to Lowes, and then forgetting what I needed at Lowes so went back to Lowes to get that, and then going back to Lowes to get some fencing for a completely different property (that obviously has a hole in the fence - or will have when a tree falls over).

The truck needing new batteries - yeah I've been putting off that and knew it was a problem. You see.....F250 diesels have 2 batteries, not 1. Both are 750 cranking amps which I believe is high. Not entirely sure why it needs two - surely it's not delivering 1500 cranking amps to the starter motor?

But I've known for a few months that the two batteries onboard are weak, so it was only a matter of time before they gave out. Lots of people came to help, even had two cars trying to jump start the truck, one car for each battery - yeah, F250 wasn't having any of it. However, it did confirm that it was the batteries as I suddenly got more life out of the ignition (eg some lights on the dash and a clicking from the starter motor).

New Ford batteries on the truck for not an unreasonable $119 each. Pity the warranty didn't cover me - apparently that's not transferrable between owners - so the new receipt is staying in the truck for when these batteries die - which they will. 

However, all things considered, the truck now starts better than it ever has (it really wasn't bad at starting before). Flick the ignition and the starter motor is much much faster and the engine practically cranks instantly.