Noob at Electrial Issues - Where to Start - Battery

[jsoto]

Alrighty gang.
Battery is a AGM that's about 2 1/2 years old. Odyssey.

Just started yesterday. No Crank. Hooked it up to the trickle charger at 8 ah for 10 minutes, enough so that it would crank and off we went. Drove, couple of stops, came back home, left it running for another 30 minutes before we shut off.

Today, same deal. No crank. I've got the charger on it now. Might trickle charge it till it goes into float mode.

I'll start the car and put a volt meter on it to see what it reads. Had wife check the cluster all day and nothing weird on the cluster (aka, alternator light or battery light error). Assuming it reads less than 13.5 , then I can assume it's the alt....

1st thing 1st. Is the best way to isolate if it's the battery 1st is to take it out of the car, charge it, remove terminals and see what the charge is on it overnight.

I suppose possibly this weird ballast issue could be the root cause of it....I'm in the middle of knee deep deadlines + a disaster recovery issue I was working on earlier so literally, I don't have time to play weekend warrior mechanic.

Thoughts ? Suggestions
http://www.xoutpost.com/bmw-sav-foru...ing-south.html