JPMusicMan

This is on a 2003 SS, and it seems to have a history of electrical problems. We inherited the truck from my brother who is now deceased, and when we got it we noticed that the battery could not hold a charge and that he had a booster pack with the vehicle to compensate for this (mind you he died with a brain tumor growing...we think he wasn't in his right mind, hence why this wasn't fixed). In an attempt to fix the problem we put a new battery in it. This still wouldn't solve the problem. A few months after we had it tested to find out that both the alternator and the battery (the one that was just put in it) were bad. The alternator and the battery were replaced. A few months ago we started to get a "Battery Not Charging" alert, and a battery light, as well as a voltmeter reading below 14 volts (the usual operating reading). This went on for a few months with minimal disturbance. Then recently, the reading would go all the way down to 9 volts, and stay there. Yesterday the reading stayed there, I lost all electrical instruments, and the truck stopped running. I was able to jump it, and run for a few miles (almost made it home) before the truck shut down again. In an attempt to fix the problem, my father and I started to troubleshoot some things. We went first to the battery connections; found that the negative terminal was heavily corroded. We cleaned that up, and charged the battery. After a charge and a test run, we noticed the behavior improved but the error still came up. We swapped batteries (put the one in that we originally took out, thinking it might still have some life in it). After a charge of that battery, the behavior still seemed to improve but alas, it went right back to the 9 volt reading and almost shut down on me. The only things we can think to do now, are to run a BATT-40 test on it to check the charging system, and to possibly replace the battery and/or alternator, again. Has anyone had these kinds of problems with their truck? My brother did install a personal computer in the truck, and not long after we inherited it we disconnected the power going to it to prevent any kind of electrical disturbance; would this installation have any devastation to the charging/electrical system? Any advice would help greatly - thanks!

Thank you gentlemen...you'll have to pardon my reaction w/ sarcasm. I guess sometimes we simply say things we shouldn't, eh? Sinr98, the OBDII scanner I was using was actually a friend of the family's and there was no code thrown out on anything other than the TPS. For some reason the operator did not clear that code, but rather once the truck was taken to a mechanic and hooked up to an OBDII unit was the code finally cleared and voila, we now have cruise. Alas the TPS is still giving us problems, and I'm thinking it needs to be replaced. Unfortunately from what I can tell on the 6.0 there is no separate TPS - it is built into the throttle body, thus the whole thing needs to be replaced.

Sure is nice to see that someone can come on the forum and get help related to a specific question about a specific situation (note sarcasm). 140+ views, and two months later and no one has said a syllable about this problem. But to keep this updated, the problem has been solved. It was hooked up to an OBD2 scanner and once the code for the TPS was cleared (mentioned above), the cruise control function returned. Thanks for the assistance...

This is my first post on this forum, so hello to all! I recently inherited a 2003 Silverado SS from my brother who passed recently. He took care of his baby, and I want to do the same. However as a young punk who also wants to test the limits of my vehicles, I took this for a snow test in our backyard (expansive, trust me). We must have a good foot of snow by now laid out, and I decided to try to take it around the yard and back towards the house. However the yard is on a grade, and downwards is our pond. As I brought the truck around towards the grade I noticed that I was losing a lot of control over where the truck was going; it was only sliding down towards the pond every time I punched the gas. Lone and behold I finally got it around the pond narrowly but I ended up in a small corner that I had to inch and punch my way out of. The only way up the hill back into the driveway from here was putting it in the tow/haul mode and using that 6.0 V8 to do what it does best; put out the HP I need to get out of this situation. The good news is that I made it out okay, and as far as I can tell there has been no damage to the engine or drive-train. The bad news is that now for some reason the cruise control no longer functions at all. I'm wondering that if in this test run of me putting it through all the demands that I did that somehow I toasted the Speed Control Sensor in doing so. I'm not that familiar with this truck and it's computer based mechanisms, and I know that it already has either a bad or poorly connected Throttle Position Sensor. I'm not sure if the SPS is the only reason why the cruise control is no longer working, hence why I'm posting. If I can get any kind of assistance in this matter I would greatly appreciate it. I do have access to an OBD2 scanner to check for sure, but perhaps I would like to bypass that if at all possible and just go straight to the source. Thanks again for any help and insight!