My car is only driven a few hundred miles a year, so it spends a lot of time
sitting in the garage. Over the decades I've gone through lots of batteries.
Typically they lasted maybe two to three years. After reading some rave
reviews about Optima batteries on a couple of car lists, I decided to give one
a try. I don't recall how many years ago that was, but it was at least ten.
I was immediately impressed by the greatly increased starter cranking speed.
This has been true every time I driven the car since. One day a couple of
years after purchasing the battery, I tried starting the car and nada! No
solenoid clicks, nothing. The instruments were dead as were the lights. I
checked the voltage across the battery terminals and it was well under 5V. I
disconnected it and re-measured. Only a very slight increase. Next I checked
the resistance between the positive cable terminal and ground. It was a few
ohms. After a bit of detective work, I traced the problem to the voltage
regulator. I had replaced the original electrical-mechanical regulator with a
solid state unit a few years prior to this. The solid state one had developed
a short which had caused the battery to drain. In hopes the battery was
salvageable, I posted my experience on a local car list asking for opinions on
this. The unanimous consensus was that the battery was a goner. Don't even
try recharging it because I'd probably destroy my charger. Toss it and get a
replacement. But I had this trickle charger I had bought for some
ridiculously low price at a White Front store back in the early '70s, so I
figured, what the heck if I zapped it. I connected it up to the battery and
let it set for a few hours. When I checked, the charger was too hot to touch,
but the red charging light on it was still lit. I checked the battery voltage
and it was up a few volts, so I just let it go. It was a cyclic thing over
several days. The charger had a circuit breaker that tripped a few times. I
just let it cool off, reset the breaker then reconnected it. Each time the
battery voltage was up 2 or 3 volts, and held steady while the charger was
disconnected. Finally the charger did die, but by then the battery voltage
was well above, 11 volts so I reconnected the car's terminal, since I had
already installed a new electrical-mechanical voltage regulator. I was able
to get the car started, so I drove it around for a while to allow the
alternator to fully charge the battery. When I finally parked, the battery
voltage was well over 12 volts. That was at least 8 years ago and since then
the battery has been just like the day I first installed it.
My Optima is a Red Top and was purchased at a local Pep Boys auto Parts store.
Since my car has no accessories, it's perfectly adequate. If you have A/C and
or lots of accessories, I would recommend the higher capacity Yellow Top. I
have also heard in recent years that Optima's quality has declined, but I
can't personally address that.
Roland
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