Optima Batteries wants your input
 

I've been chosen by Optima Batteries to attend SEMA this year as their guest! While there I will attend an educational seminar on their products, plus participate in an advisory conference of internet forum members from a wide range of automotive interests. They want to know what problems you are having with their products or service, and how they can do better.

After a brief review of our Electrical section archives, I've seen many posts about how to recharge a dead Optima battery, and some reports of battery life too short, also charging system or battery drain issues.

My task will be to report these issues to Optima so they can improve their products, and also to bring back to you more tech on how to properly maintain and charge them.

The Optima guys are our kind of people and are investing a lot this year to hear feedback from us, plus if there is anything special you want me to report on or photograph from SEMA (not just batteries) please include it in this thread. I have to say, their heart is in the right place on this, and they just want to get input and do better.
Thanks, David

I love their products and use them in all my toys.:thumbsup: However, I've never had much luck with the red top batteries, so I'm wondering if they've come up with any ideas on those. I know I'm on many car boards, and that one battery is a common theme as far as short life. I just replaced one in the Chevelle, went with a yellow top. I have the charger for those batteries, but it never seems to bring the red ones back.

Jody

I've been running the red top for about a year and a half. I find that it must be on a battery tender or it goes flat pretty fast compared to other toys. It seems to have plenty of juice when I go to start it after a drive.

I have a red top as well that needs to be on a trickle charger if I don't use the car for a week or so, so it's on the charger steady when It's at home not being driven.

I've got Optima YELLOW tops in 3 cars... and run the CTEK (7000) chargers / maintainers - which have a specific setting for these type (AGM) batteries.

I love 'em!

Even the YELLOW top version "drain" quickly if not on the maintainers. At least at my house they do anyway.

Ive just never had any luck with them. I had the yellow one in a show car and truck and it was always dead within a week.

I've had great luck with Yellows, the one in my DD has been going strong for 5+ years. I've completely drained it multiple times and it always comes back to life. The Reds have been hit or miss me.

Seems to me that it may be the lack of use that kills them. I would be interested to see how many of the folks that have had bad luck kept them on a trickle charger. Optima may need to advise their customers to do just that......

I too had an early life failure on the one and only Optima (red top) I have ever owned. (2004 time frame). It only lasted about 8 months. Place I bought it from wouldn't replace it and that was that...When the car was sitting, It was always on a battery maintainer that was designed for AGM batteries.

My message / feedback to Optima would be that they really should acknowledge the abnormally high failure rate on the red top and publish a tech bulletin that outlines the various reasons why early life failures were so rampant (surely they have done some failure analysis and production analysis, and know very well what the main deficiencies were (or are)).

They need to get the word out on what they have done (or are doing) to work on the problems and improve the product since then.

I will be using another optima (probably the yellow top) in my current project, since I am set up with a trunk mount setup w/optima battery hold-down.

But I'd really like to have good reason (data) to have more confidence in the product. I certainly don't go out of my way to recommend Optima batteries to people, for general-use applications.

I think it's fair to say that most of us use them in our (hobby) cars because of the fact that they don't discharge fluids...and some folks take advantage of the mounting flexibility....that's about it.

I have a Red Top and if it sits for any length of time without a pretty continuous "maintenance" charge it discharges quite a bit.