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.
|