Educate me - Optima Batteries

Mine (in my truck) lasted eight Alaska winters. The OEM one lasted three. Don't know if they make a difference in a "pleasure" car, but I will stick with it for the basic transporation.

 

I believe Optima uses gel rather than sulfuric acid therefore it prevent corrosion on the terminal and on the battery tray.
It can also be mounted at any positions (upside down, sideways, etch...) they also have the spiralcell design and doesn't
requires maintenance, But personally I think it's over priced, that's why I bought the Interstate battery.
http://www.1st-optima-batteries.com/

 

The manufacturing quality is excellent of and they can take serious abuse. They are very popular in racing of all types and the deep cycle batteries are preferred with the offshore racers. The fervor is basically that they are tough as hell.

 

Lots of aircrafts uses optima due to their spill proof.

 

Aren't they lighter?

If you want to save weight, I'll bet you can improve on a normal lead acid cell.

 

Yep. I think that there is an easy 5 lbs. saved.

When you are looking to save weight, that one is easy.

 

The yellow tops are not damaged by drians and recharges like most other batteries.

 

Last longer
Weigh less
Don't spill/leak
Can be mounted in any position (except upside-down)
Legal to ship (UPS, FedEx, etc.; because they don't spill or leak)

 

I went Interstate because my Ferrari tech said to avoid Optimas, due to the deep cycling. The price difference is probably trivial to anyone on this board.

 

I'm switching to Optima next year (no clue what's in there now from previous owner). I've never heard of it not being good for deep cycling, and anyway as an often used non-race car I'm not deep cycling anyway.


I've been running an 11.5 lb. AGM (Absorbed Glass Matt) battery in my STi for a few years (Deka), cranks fine all winter and saved over 20 lbs.

 

I'm gonna catch some **** for this, but you people are easily sold. Optima batteries are complete garbage. They are gel, not dry cell which is the true weight saver, and they are not near as rugged as they are made out to be. I owned one and it failed, I will never own one again. Buy an Odyssey for the same money and save 50% more weight. They were dropped by the military because they failed too frequently. Do some research, and you'll read all of the same stuff.

 

I've got interstate in the Ferrari from the previous owner but I tried the Optima in my Chevy Tahoe because of the video/audio drain and time between drives. I found that it didn't last any longer than the stock battery and was definetly damaged from being discharged and jumped/recharged many times. My new Bosch battery has been much better and has lasted longer than the Optima at half the cost. I think they are overpriced and hyped up too much, no real value IMO.

Jeff

 

+100%

Highly overrated and overpriced!

Life of a battery is an ethereal thing.

I had a Trak Auto(no longer in business) battery in one of my cars for 15 years. It was still starting strong when I sold the car.

In my book, best bang for the buck now is Interstate.

Spend big bucks if you want, but you won't be any better off; just poorer.

 

No flak, I have to second your comment about the Optima's. I too was all hyped up and ready to buy an Optima when my friend stopped me from making the same mistake he made. He had a more reserved word to associate them with than "garbage". But I will say this in Optima's defense, if you absolutely need a battery that will not spill or installed on a platform that has excessive rattle and impact, the Optima has it's place.

 

Wow, it's not often that all (?) of the anti-Optima crowd here on Fchat show up in one thread.
In my job I've had usage of DOZENS of Optimas (yellow top) and wasn't a bit impressed, nor was an engineer more senior than me who had much more experience with conventional deep cycle batteries before we switched. If I was going to be moving a battery to the rear (interior) of a hatchback, or was going to be mounting something in some odd position, sure, I'd go with an Optima (or research some of the alternatives), but just to swap something out because it's "the best" or "cooler" or whatnot... not.

 

There's a place for Optima batteries. In the old Celica GT-Fours, the battery in the engine bay was subject to turbo heat, and was in the way of the engine air intake. So many people relocated the battery to the rear. But in a hatchback, that's part of the cabin, so the gel cel was the rage, there. (In retrospect, an Odyssy dry cell might have been good too, albeit at the cost of lower cranking amps.)

But a 328 that sits out winter months (where the temps are too low for the tires) is *not* the place for a Red Top. Letting a Red Top drain down will impair its capacity -- my recovery system will now drain my Red Top in two or three days. A yellow top might have worked better (other than the placement of the terminals), but it seems that the blue top (marine batteries) are the ones intended for deep discharge ... but not for auto installations.

So right now, it looks like the next battery for the 328 will be an Interstate.
(I already have the Schumacher battery tender.)

But for the Alfa, with zero "off" current (not even a clock), and the battery in the (cool) trunk, I might go for another DieHard -- the one that just died (after 2 years of sitting) was from 1993, and had recovered from several long disuse periods without missing a beat.
But I wouldn't put a DieHard behind the 328's radiator. A Die Hard collapsed internally in the GT-Four from sitting a few inches from the turbo. Die Hards seem to handle deep discharges just fine ... if they keep cool -- just don't get them hot.

 

Here's a little tidbit:

Interstate
Bosch
Duralast (Autozone)
Diehard
EverStart (Wal-Mart)
and others

...are all made by Johnson Controls, who also own Optima. That's right. They're made in the same plants by the same mfr. (Though Optimas are made in a different plant in Colorado.)

Most Optimas fail because people use the wrong one. Red Top is for starting, Yellow Top is for deep-cycling. They are not gel, they're AGM (Absorbed Glass Mat). When used properly, Optimas are excellent.

Here's another one. Did you know that any starting battery that becomes deeply discharged (as in leaving your lights on overnight) is permanently damaged and its life expectancy is severely compromised?

 

Die Hards have been made by several different companies, over the years (JCI, Delco, Exide). http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E04E4DD1031F931A15757C0A962958260&n=Top%2fNews%2fBusiness%2fCompanies%2fJohnson%20Controls%2c%20Inc%2e, http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/1997/06/09/tidbits.html, http://groups.google.com/group/rec.autos.misc/msg/b9a4944a8192de88?q=optima+battery+%22johnson+controls%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&safe=off&rnum=17, http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/1999/03/01/daily15.html, http://www.engineeringtalk.com/news/eer/eer114.html
(There was a bit of news about defects at the then current manufacturing plant, a few years back, and a 2001 fraud court case.)

Many oil filters are made by Champ Labs, too --- but they're made to different specs. So a $2 WalMart filter isn't the same as a $15 Mobil-1, even though they're manufactured by the same company.

The electrochemistry is a smidge more involved than that. A half wave battery "rejuvenator" can break loose much of the plate deposits caused by deep discharge or fluid evaporation in a conventional lead-acid battery.

But with laptop battery technology changing monthly, people seem to want "new tech" battery buzzwords for their car batteries.

 

FIRST post with factual material... AGM is the "new" technology.

That said, I use Interstate in the F-car, Odyssey in the race cars...

-Peter
www.peterkrause.net

 

That is why I bought one. My 308 sits a lot and I often plug it in to recharge the battery. Also I have a amp sitting above it that is so powerful it requires a 1 gauge power wire. I need it to actually hear the stereo on those long highway drives with the top out to and from Atlanta.
So far so good for 2 years now.

 

I have never understood the "mount at any angle" advantage for a street car. How many of us have one sitting sideways or upside down in our Ferrari for the road?

 

Yeah, sorry I got one too, looked nice and red in the engine compartment but totally failed and was not rechargeable. Stick with the name brand dry cells.

 

At least not intentionally!

 

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=116217