Even after a several hour charge it's hard to start WHEN it does so battery time and guess it's back to one since the Orbital gels are pricey IF you can even find em. So, is Optima the cats meow or will a good ol Auto-zone get it done and no 3 lb stuff for me cos I need the ballast and after mounting up my new ft and rear Hoosiers, it's track time and a 6.0 pass...........

Optima's are great as long as you keep them charged. I have seen many go over 10 years...

Good question, I am in the same boat. My optima gave up after 11 years and I will need a new battery this spring. I have heard Optimas are not that good anymore since the moved production to Mexico.

Had great luck over the years with Interstate batteries. My battery searches have started and ended with them

Costco RY and Marine battery(now Interstate brand) work well for me in our type of cars, I bought a pair of Everready batteries(made by Johnson control CO) from Walmart my 2006 Ram 3500 truck last winter when it got down to 5 F above here and they are still sitting in the shop waiting for me to swap them into the truck, maybe this winter I'll install them when it won't start again without a battery charger on them below 10F

One of my blue tops is 10 1/2 years old. The other one bought at the same time lasted a week, and never could receive a full charge. It's replacement lasted barely 3 years and a couple weeks. The Interstate I replaced it with is 7 1/2 years old. They've gotten LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of use in my boat when I go fishing almost every day.

Thankxxx guys and one of mine is from 06 and not sure on the other so ya, got my moneys worth and maybe just one will help it hook since two seemed better in that area........

Seems to me I've been told optima is now made in Mexico and suck, mine lasted a year in a street strip 10.20 car now run a battery from deka I believe called intimidator and love it. Circle track guy turned me on to it, absorbs vibration really well. My dad has had an interstate for 7 years now and no issue too

Optima is made in Mexico but they do not suck. I think they went through a rough patch when they moved production but that was a really long time ago.

Dom I would use one yellow top, two if you need the ballast. I have a single Yellow top that is seven years old and it is working great. I have electric WP, Two Fuel pumps, two fans, and EFI. I have made as many as twelve passes at the track cooling it down between rounds with zero starting issues.

You can also use the blue top with the light grey bottom. The Blue tops are the same thing they just have the marine terminals on them and no side posts. The Blue top with the black bottom is the same as the red top. The downside of buying the blue tops is that the warranty is only two years vs three for the yellows and reds.

I hope the Optima issues have been resolved. My battery box is tucked in so tightly that you can't change the battery without pulling the box. I used an Optima red top with good results before, but will need a new one when the engine goes back into the car.

Interested in a cost effective option?

Nearly all of our batteries come from the salvage yards. $30 +/- most of the time. Most batteries have the group code, production date, and capacity on them, so an informed choice can be made.

I use salvage yard batteries in the Cuda, all the tractors, and most of the used cars. If we stay with batteries made within the last year or so, we rarely have a failure. The used battery in the Cuda has been in there several years now and still starts the Hemi just fine.

Salvage yard batteries save us hundreds of dollars a year.

We have Sears Diehard Platinum batteries in all of our cars and have for years but now it seems they are gone now too.

I've been using the Cosco batteries for years..
the one in the race car has been in it 10 years
and I only had to charge it 1 time when the alt
hot lead came unplugged.. now I use it in my
boat.. its a Allstate

Optima

red Optima in my car.

Well, I cranked it over and my room mate said they dropped to 7-8 volts which he said was bad so what is an acceptable drop in voltage while starting a car..........Electric guy I am not..........

Anything below 10.8 volts junk.

One battery may light the thing off just fine, and nothing says the 2nd battery has to work or be connected if you just need ballast. Seems to me that A-bodies need all the rear weight you can put in there. I've seen as much as 300 lbs of ballast to get them to pitch rotate on a mid-10s car.
I've had good service from my Optimas but usually just buy batteries from Autozone, keep 'em on a Schumacher trickle-charger, and I get more than 7 years out of them and as much as 10. A load test (amps) is a better way to judge if the battery has enough grunt, but I've found if there's less than 12.4 static it's just about done for anything with decent CR or cyl pressure.

If the battery stays above 9.6 volts when it is tested at its rated CCA then it is good, what it should drop to in the car depends on how much your starter draws. It is safe to say if it drops that low with TWO batteries then you for sure have a problem lol.

What is the voltage on the batteries just sitting off the charger?

Here's a kicker.........after my last attempt to add air slots and holes in the rear valance to re leave the air that was getting trapped in there and blowing out my fuel cell foam plug, my dumb ass forgot to hook up the ground from the rear bumper bolt I've been using forever. So it looks like I killed em but they were 11 years old and the single 1000 cca saves almost 45 lbs so maybe a blessing in disguise..........the only ground in tact was the fuel cell small azz wire so I'm surprised it even worked at all........feeling pretty stupid right now........

Well Thump.. you had too have had enough ground
for the starter to work..thats the highest load
you have.. so dont feel bad.. but get it right
while you can.. and I know that little ground
wasnt the only one

Someone didn't listen to Monte tell everyone to run a ground to the front of the car

No one is perfect and thats a long long battery life. Ive always ran three main grounds, battery to body by deck lid hinge, battery to rear inner bumper and same sized heavy cable as the positive to rear of one cylinder head.

I get 5-6 years out of a farm tractor type interstate battery.

I take total blame for sure and I get pissed at myself for the stupid stuff I do but live and learn and yes, I have other grounds up front and maybe that saved me but the main ground was attached to the battery's but was just laying in the trunk ...........Good news is that the 1000 cca Auto-zone bad boy spins it over very fast and hopefully the car hooks as good as my 1.33 60 ft.........thankxxx, you guys rock.........

I went through the to little ground on a local racers street car this past weekend, he had used a positive battery cable he had off another junk car for the ground cable. He had a coil of #2 battery cable about 8 ft. long and wanted me to wire the car from a six cylinder stick car to street hemi motor with a 727 in a 1963 Dodge Polara 440 he had owned forever with the battery in the trunk, I bought a 6 ft. piece of #2 battery cable and a straight splice to put the two parts together. I solder it together and put a #2 terminal on the starter and battery ends, he had put a battery out of his camper trailer that he knew was old and didn't have any reserve capacity It would turn the starter over about a 270 degrees on the first attempt and stop like a dead battery with the spark plugs in and around 90 degrees on the second attempt
I had two new Ever Ready truck batteries in the shop so I swap his out and put one of those in, it still did the same thing even with a 30 amp charger on the new battery
It was the tiny stock # 4 battery cable used as a ground I added another #4 ground to the inner fender well pinch weld and bingo, it turned over like it should
Stupid me had thought about adding two block grounds up front when I had to pull the tranny out for him and forgot to do that, it wouldn't have help the rear battery ground though, the ground cable needs to match or be bigger than the positive battery cable size

grounds are pretty important, and you almost can't have too many of them. grounds in a fiberglass body car can really be problematic if not done correctly.

Yes, you can have too many grounds...all grounds need to be concentrated from one point, otherwise you can get ground loop noise. Not as important with points ignition, but with more complex EFI injection and Ignition systems, it is important not to induce RF/EMI noise into the ground system, including Ground loop noise.

There are lots of articles on the web for reading.

Mark

you are correct on the noise issue. i was referring to the grounds needed for components to operate correctly. central grounding is the way to correct RFI. sorry if i didn't relay my thoughts in a correct manner. my old mind sometimes doesn't work like it is supposed to.....

After my last Redtop stopped taking a charge out on the road, I went with a Deka AGM. Made by East Penn. Autozone had it, group 34 size, ~$200.

Sorry Moparx, yes you are very correct!

Clean sheet metal for grounding my front and rear side marker lights on my Super-bee are a prime example of what you are saying! Still scraping all of the undercoating off under the fenders.

I have 2 Yellow top Optimas’ in my two cars, but current at idle is very important, as I have 150 amp race Powermaster densos’, but current at Idle is 50-55 amps! I need a race denso that puts out around 90-95 amps at Idle. I do have the small Powermaster deep groove alt. Pulley.

One thing I have noticed, is that the discharge rates of these batteries are not even close, and they drain off of each other...I have been keeping a small battery tender plugged in at all times to make sure they are fully charged.

Optima does make a marine deep-cycle battery, but it takes a completely different mount system.

Mark

The kid at Autozone tried selling me that one but when I asked about the difference and it's charging needs, he got lost w/no answers. What's funnier is when I said I needed a battery for a 72 big block dart w/12.1 compression.........he had to go get help....... Fixed now after an 11:00 pm thrash and back to testing carbs. Thankxxx again guys and this is a TINY screw up compared to some others..........

DEKA are very good batteries...I have some in my motorhome. Boy are they heavy!

My next move is to replace my alternators with Race Densos’ that are around 180 Amps, with 80-95 amps at idle. I think that will keep my batteries in better shape, I at least hope so.

Mark

Finally started my car and this thing cranks like never before.........

Good for you

VERY happy Mike and it even leaned out a carb that was rich yesterday so after a tweak and blast holy chit is all I can say..........

Dom did you go from a dual to a single battery

Yes I did and it starts awesome but still concerned that the extra weight I removed may upset the hook as it did years ago............

thump, did i ever see [or ask for] a pic of your battery terminals ?

No why............My old batteries had top and side posts the new just top post...........

My last Optima experience was not a good one. It got weak in about 8 months, called tech tech and they told me to do a "10A rapid charge", I followed their instructions verbatim which resulted in a split case, then they told me I was on my own. Got pissed and threw a cheapo walmart battery in my satellite and never had a problem after that. I had great luck with Optima up to that point, but that whole situation killed Optima for me. I'm sure there are better AGM options out there.

I did not have good luck with my optima red top. Maybe 3yrs and had to replace it. Friend of mine went thru 2 in 3yrs. I replaced mine with a autozone agm 3 yrs ago and would have still been good if i hadnt had the alternator issues. Ran dead 5 times. Not much capacity left in it. Looking for a new battery as well.

just checking to make sure you are not using those cheapy, corrosion inducing, clamp on cable ends. you know, one of my pet peeves.

No, I used proper length fixed/molded cables and the cable from the battery to the + bulkhead is from NAPA w/properly crimped and heat shrunk ends........

Yeah, but ballast is much more adjustable to shift weight amount and position than a battery!

I just may leave the 45+ lbs. out and hope it still hooks which on brand new QTP's which it should just like before...........or not..........

UNTILL RECENTLY THE INTERSTATE, WALLMART, ADVANCE AUTO.MOTORCRAFT.AC DELCO, MOPAR, AUTO ZONE,NISSAN, TOYOTO, AND SEARS ARE ALL THE SAME BATTERY MADE BY JOHNSON CONTROL MOST OF WHICH ARE MADE IN MEXICO. RECENTLY INTERSTATE ENTERED INTO A PARTNERSHIP WITH EXIDE TO BUILD THEIR BATTERIES. THIS WILL BE INTERESTING TO WATCH THIS " QUALITY" ISSUE UNFOLD. I KNOW THIS FOR FACT BECAUSE I OWN A BATTERY COMPANY AND HAVE BEEN IN THE BATTERY BUSINESS SINCE 1982

Stop yelling.......... I can say the battery I got from Auto-zone kicks ass and turns my car over better than ever and is a Dura-last for what it's worth.............