This thread saved me some trouble, but lacked closure, so I signed up to the forum to add my experience. To the guy who said “low voltage for $400,” I will just say thanks.
I have a 2022 Deere 333G on a small farm. I have experienced a few glitches here and there, but after doing some light (2-3”) tree pulling last Thursday for a couple hours, started to get some codes, glitching, and then the hydraulics shut off and the stop light flashing until I shut it down. It was late and dark so I just left the machine in the field and came back the next day.
Codes were, basically, everything. HCU, left joystick, right joystick, CAN communication, ECU, and EMU (if I recall). When I powered up pre start, it would act like the joysticks were being moved (beeping and saying activate hydraulics) and it would throw codes. If I proceeded to start it, it would throw codes all over and then stop light would flash and I would just shut it down.
Eventually it totally bricked and when I would press the initial start button, it would land with one light on the start button flashing and do nothing else…no crank, no start, nothing, with the peculiar tell of the temp sensor dancing around like it was getting power then not. I checked and traded a bunch of the relays and fuses, only to land in the same bricked state.
Needless to say, I was not happy with this meltdown of a machine out in the woods.
Long story less long, I searched everywhere for an answer over Friday and Saturday, and didn’t really find much, except for this thread, and the reference to low battery voltage.
On Saturday I went to the machine and pulled the battery. It tested “good” but only showed 12.3 volts, and so low charge. I have a lithium booster battery and so put that on the battery and it did not allow me to get the machine started. So, I charged the battery up overnight and installed it and voila! No more electrical gremlins at all. I directly drove the machine out of the woods.
I had no idea low battery voltage, even with a good charging system and an old but decent health battery, could cause such problems. I guess the many different electrical draws depend on the battery to smooth things out, and even though I had been operating the machine for a couple hours, the temperature had dropped about 20 degrees in our first cool snap in the Carolina’s…and with me running at lower power with lights and ac compressor on, leading to marginal battery voltage and to a lot of systems starving for supply.
I guess the bottom line is to check the battery first! Thanks for this thread. It easily saved me a field visit from Deere. Now I at least know not to let the machine sit for a long time without a charger on it.
