New Battery Time

Well, it looks like its new battery time. I've almost finished wiring up my headlights and was doing some testing and the ol' exide doesn't seem to want to wake up from it's slumber. The load tester showed marginal on the voltage ~13V and under load showed weak. It wouldn't take a charge from my charger either, so I guess it's done for. </moment of silence>

Assuming that there's no value left on its warranty, depends on if I can argue with Kragen again. Since, I'll be installing a Bellview winch, I'm going to go with an AC Delco Voyager Deep Cycle if I can find it. Any thoughts and please don't say Optima. $150 for a battery ain't gonna happen. :evil:

 

That might be a possibility, especially if I can get some credit for the existing battery. I'm having a hard time finding ac-delco dealers in so cal.

 

If it's the only battery Joel, you want a dual-purpose starting/deep cycle battery rather than a plain old deep cycle unit. Deep cycles take a LOT longer to fully recharge.

 

What Steve said. You don't want/need a deep cycle unit unless you're winching most of the time while the Jeep isn't running or something silly like that.









Optima

<ducking>

On a serious note, I'm only on my second one in 10 years or so. The old one went away in the TJ still happy.

 

I paid $105 for the red top in the Grand Cherokee. It failed after a year and had to be replaced (under warranty). I just don't think the Optimas are worth the extra coin, especially if I go with a yellow top.

 

Huh. Never had any issues with either of my red tops.

Like I said in a forum elsewhere recently. It would seem that for every 20 or 30 or 50 people that like something and had good luck with it, one person didn't. Simple statistics, there's bound to be something go wrong for someone with something, especially mechanical devices...

I tend to put more weight on the community experience than just one or two bad ones. JMO.

FWIW, I did have one of my red tops fall onto the header (the one in my CJ-5 now) and melted a bit, it's still fine vs. a Sears bat. I had that came loose, slid into my fan on my Firebird and disintegrated, rapidly. YMMV.

 

The red top didn't stand up well against 3 year olds playing with the rear seat reading lamps. That being the case I'm not sure it would hold up well when winching. In any case, so far the second red top is holding up well, although it hasn't yet been subjected to a full discharge by 3 year olds.

I've got to locate my big bucket of receipts and dig through it for the battery replacement stub. IIRC, Betsy has used up about 48 Months of a 72 Month warranty on an Exide battery that replaced the previously warrantied Champion "Truck/SUV" battery that was 2 years old. If there's a significant value remaining, I'll probably end up with whatever Kragen offers in the right Group Size for a Starting/Deep Cycle. Hopefully, it's only around $50-$75 out of pocket.

 

Dang, that's the exact opposite of my experience with it. Lex drove my TJ on the battery alone for about a week once after the alternator had died...

 

I'm not really upset with the first battery failing. Pepboy's did a good job handling the warranty and I was in and out of the store in about 5 mins with no arguments. If anything I'm being Dutch and don't see the value in paying $200 for a yellow top AGM battery vs a Lead-Acid alternative in a sub-$100 range.

 

ah you just Yadda yaddaed over the best part........8.8 sec........could you post details?