Last night I was 20 miles from home and got the "check gages" light, the battery gauge was down to the first line. I shut everything off that I could and buy the time I got home it was down to the red line, I had almost no headlights and it literarily died in driveway.

Upon checking the connections the post that connects to the battery was broken. So I disconnected the battery and put the charger on it. This morning I could see that the stud was partially eaten through and that's where it broke.

Wife's been sick (no pay check) and its rent week, & I'm broke and need the truck.

So I took the shield off the stud, slipped a piece of shrink tubing over it and reattached the wire, taped the hell out of the connection. Good news is that worked great, (and I will be ordering an Alternator this week), but now after the first test run the truck will fire right off but the RPMs drop and it stalls, if I keep my foot in it run and steady out at the normal idle, Now after many starts It will start right off almost stall the RPMs drop to about 400 and then come back up to the normal idle.

IS this just the computer relearning after the battery getting so low?

 

It sounds like it, yes. IAC memory keeps getting reset.

 

Something still doesn't sound right. OP, can you give me your readings from a volt meter with the truck off, and the truck running please directly on the battery terminals.

 

I know this sounds stupid and really doesn't seem like it you have been the problem but I think I just fixed it.

I didn't re-clean the battery terminals since I had just done that a couple of weeks back when I did the plenum. All I did was reconnect the negative side and called it good.

My Bad I should know better after 35 years of working on vehicles.

Everything is back to normal now that I took the time and cleaned them again.