(UPDATE) Possibly Solved, Battery dies overnight when temps are below 40°

You could "induce" a cell "failure". There are a number of ways to short out a battery.

 

I have a feeling a few more cold nights is going to do the same thing

 

How far do you drive every day?

 

At least 15 miles per day

 

I would keep a log of your miles. If on days where your not driving a lot are the nights that the battery dies, it cold be that your alternator doesn't have enough time to charge the battery.

I use to live about 7 miles from work and when I only drove from work to home my engine would struggle to start numerous times.

Days I actually drove my car my car would start fine the next day. Cold Temps would make things worse though it would happen on hot days occasionally as well.

Usually it would he the first start, then after that it would (usually) be good all day. Night comes, Temps drop and my car sits for x hours and then a rough start in the morning.

 

I thought this at first but last semester I drove less miles per day and sometimes not even everyday.

This semester I drive the same route everyday +- a mile or two. I will start to log my miles and the temps at night when it happens.

 

That's a lot of work for a battery. Sears let me walk in and grab a new properly sized battery and leave the old one without even a blink when I needed to replace one on my Dakota years ago. It died under warranty and they didn't even test the bad one. Good luck with getting a replacement.

 

I wish Advanced was like that. They put their total trust in a little computer that just clamps onto the battery and trust what it says

 

I called customer service today and they called the store to talk to the manager. I then went in and talked to the same manager that customer service talked to and he gave me a new battery with no hassle. He said that I should not have been turned away after the third time especially if the full system check they ran came up fine. All is good and now all I have to do is wait for it to get cold again to see if it happens again.

 

Nice! Glad they made it right. Good luck Op.

 

Thanks! In glad they made it right too

 

OP, good that they finally replaced your battery.

I got batteries from Costco. You have a problem with it, just return it, and warranty will be honored, no questions asked, no testing done. I'm sure they have replaced many perfectly good batteries that went dead because the headlights were left on all night...Costco don't care, the supplier takes the hit.

 

I wish I had some more options but here in Laramie there is not many choices

 

So my battery was dead dead this morning. Like couldn't even unlock the doors dead, no door chime either. This was with a new battery from the store.

I'm planning on picking up a voltometer to check for a parasitic draw after class but am looking for ideas to what may be the cause.

 

Do you have any accessories wired directly to your battery? Audio, lighting, cb radio?

 

This may sound dumb, but I had something happen to my truck that was draining batteries, so once you're done driving for the night, peek through the windows. Are there any dash lights on? Temp gauge on? Passenger air bag indicator light on?

I had a wire or two that happened to vibrate the coatings off each other, causing them to short and stay on, draining the battery each night. These happened to be cold nights also. The warmer nights, the battery didn't seem to drain enough to not start.

 

Yeah I have duallys and a CB wired to an aux fusebox. When this happened a few weeks ago I pulled those fuses and it still happened. I have also pulled all other electronics i had added.

 

I'll check that!

 

This. Something is staying energized and there's bound to be some indication. Iff you can't find anything that is on, you've got a short to gound, probably before your fuse box.

 

Wouldn't a shorted ground before the fuse box show up on the parasitic draw test though?