Optima battery is dead again
 

:soapbox:

I bought a yellow top back in July of 2008. I even had a hard time trying to find the one I needed because it wasn't listed on their regular list at the time, so of course it was more expensive than the "off the shelf" ones.

This is at least the 10th time it has died out in that time. It has been sitting less than a month this time in my 2004 GTO and it is now down to 5.3 volts (don't even know if it will even take a normal chage being so low). I bought a trickle charger for the winter but I figured I wouldn't need it yet, because it's only been sitting a few weeks. I never had this problem with my factory battery so I'm not thinking it's a draw or anything. These yellow tops are supposed to be one of the best deep-cycle batteries out there? hmmmm.....

I had enough of this, so I finally decided to look up the warranty and of course it's expired. I still wasn't even that mad yet, until I saw that EXACTLY 6 months AFTER I bought my battery, they changed the warranty from 12 months to 36 months!!!

Well, I'm all done venting so now I just sit here and wait to see if it takes a charge.

You must use a battery tender on these batteries.

STOP charging it right now!!!!!

look up on line Hot Rod did a "how to" on the dead Optima problem, and they did this with the engineers fom optima,

you have to trick the battery to take a charge, you have to hook up the dead battery in series with a good battery and then start charging them together, I'll look on line for the article,

I just put Yellow tops in both kids cars 3 months ago -- Alexs died this week and checked out DOA.... just replaced it with a normal lead acid battery.

The Red Top in the Nomad has been in there since 1999! I use a Ctek tender on it which has a circuit for this TYPE of batter.... They don't like "normal" battery tenders.

http://www.hotrod.com/techarticles/g...ery/index.html


See if this works for you!

Yea definitely use a battery tender. I use CTEK on mine. Always had that problem till now.

Ya, if you dont need one of these "sealed" battery they are way to much trouble... We just replaced a brand new one, then thought we had a charging problem but nope the second one would not take/hold a charge either, 3rd time was a charm...

Wow I'm glad this came up. My Yellow Top just took a dump on me and of course the warranty is expired. I'll have to try that tip from Hot Rod.

Definitely pick up a Cytek. They even have a recondition feature :)

It's kinda sad but they're pretty much a necessity if you don't drive the car for a couple weeks at a time.

Matt

Yup, use a Ctek. It even has an Optima setting :D