Friend of mine just bought a new to him '06 Ram 2500 4x4 5.9L 140k miles and is already having a problem. The under hood light broke off of it's mount, turned on and killed his batteries overnight. Now, when AAA came to jump it, the truck had no get up and go and wouldn't rev past 2500. I'm thinking it has something to do with the PCM memory getting erased but is it as simple as driving it around or is there something else he should do besides replace the batteries?

 

Check for codes, also, if the bats are not fully charged our trucks do funny stuff...

 

^^^ This ^^^

Low batteries cause strange things to happen. He may still need to replace them. Sometimes a battery that is not in real good shape that gets drained like that will never recover, no matter how much you try to charge them.

 

I told him to go to Sears and get that new Platinum P2 series battery. I still have the originals in mine. How long do the originals last?

 

The originals are still in my 03, and will still pass a load test with my hand held load bank. I know this is exceptional, and may fail at anytime, but I just can't bring myself to replace them while they are still functioning.

 

Ed make sure he replaces both of them otherwise the low one (normally the drivers side) will kill the new one!

 

I already primed him for that, lol!

 

Sounds good keep us informed he may help some other poor soul down the road with his fix!

As for your question about battery life, my son's '05 failed this year. So 6 years in his case..