Hi Paul and Mike
>Paul,
>Once upon a time, I decided that battery quality was related to amount of
>lead and therefore price and therefore weight. I ran around allover town
>weighing size 27 batteries. I found HUGE weight discepancies. As I recall, it
>ranged from 30 to 65 lbs for teh same size battery.
>Mike Moore
This reminds me of the legend of why cheddar cheese is orange. Long ago,
the story goes, the natural color of this cheese varied from off-white to
yellow depending on what the cows ate. Consumers at some point decided that
the more brightly colored cheese was better, and selected that. Maybe it
tasted better, or maybe it was just the fashion. In any case, the
manufacturers caught on, started adding a little bit of dye (annatto), the
baseline shifted, things got carried away, and now almost all Cheddar is bright
orange, with no correlation (or perhaps a negative one?) between color and
quality.
So, does this mean we're headed toward 80-Lb ballast-filled batteries? I
hope not. ;)
In any case, since we're talking about non-original batteries anyway, I'll
make the usual pitch for spending a bit more to get a sealed battery like an
Optima. You can thank me later when your battery tray isn't rusted through
like most of them out there. The Group 34 red-top is the one to get, or the
yellow-top if you have deep-cycle tendencies.
Optima specs (redtop/yellowtop):
minimum weight = 38 Lbs/44 Lbs
cca = 800/750
RC = 100/120
c/20 = 50 Ah/55 Ah
LxWxH = 10" x 6 7/8" x 7 13/16"/ditto
No, they don't pay me for this. :) It just makes me sad whenever I see
good cars with holes under the battery.
-Nick Wolf
1962-ish TR4 (Optima red-top)
2000 New Beetle TDI (dunno... it's buried under the plastic)
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