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Battery ?

B

BrokeBrewKnow

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Western Mass
Hey guys my battery died going to replace it with either an optima or oddysey? Any of you have experience with either one. Its going in a 99 cherokee sport 4.0 and its going to have 4 or 6 fogs on it. plus small stereo set up.

Thank you,
Mike
 
I have an optima yellow top and it just works like it's supposed to....no problems. A friend had a red top and he let it sit for a few years and not it won't hold a charge....but that's expected seeing as how it wasn't used for SO long and sat outside in the jeep, potentially with a small voltage draw.

No experience with odyssey, but hear good things about them.
 
people talk smack about optima's since they moved production to mexico.....

but ive been running my mexican redtop optima for 4+ years now, everything ive done with my jeep, has been with that battery. never let me down under normal use (you cant leave lights on with any battery, and expect it to start. those are the only problems ive had with them)

people like the oddyssey's to though.

a friend had a silverado that killed optima's via a battery drain, after a while they wouldnt hold a charge, ive had good luck putting them on a slow-charge for 3-4 days. we never had any problems on the jeeps though... damn chevies.
 
I work at a freightliner dealership and we dont deal with interstate which distributes optima. But we do deal with Northeast that distributes oddyssey thats why Im thinking of going that way. Thanks for the input guys
 
Optima all the way.

But go to Kragens or which is now O'Reily. I got my Yellow top thinking I was going to pay 200+, but it was about 170 and some change after taxes even.
 
My Odyssey is actually the Sears branded version. I got it for about $200ish, but it's also a size or two larger than stock. It's a P4
 
I have a blue top optima that seems to work fine, although I haven't had it more than 6 months. The jeep is a ranch rig, so it only gets driven maybe once a month. I had 2 Exide Orbitals in my 96 XJ and they were fantastic, especially for winching and a few hundred watts of lights. I'd get an Odysee as my next battery, but can't justify the added cost. A couple of my mechanic friends swear you can't kill an Odysee with a passenger vehicle. They put them in heavy city equipment and they last for 10 something years.
 
Hello, I noticed your conversation regarding our batteries and wanted to offer some assistance. Mike, I'm glad to hear you scored a good deal on your RedTop. If your small stereo ever gets large or you end up installing a winch, you'll probably want to move up to a YellowTop at that time.

The key to long battery life, regardless of brand, is good voltage maintenance. When batteries are discharged below 12.4 volts and allowed to sit in that state, sulfation begins to diminish both performance and lifespan. That is why we recommend a quality battery tender or maintainer for any vehicle that doesn't see regular use.

mjma, xcm, 98XJLongBuild, Planetcat, & clean4drxj, I'm glad to hear you've all had good experiences with your Optimas. The batteries we are producing today are the best we have ever built. If anyone has any questions about our batteries, I'll do my best to answer them.


Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries, Inc.
www.facebook.com/optimabatteries
 
I'd like to mention that I have a yellow top that went dead and assumed was bad since it wouldn't take a charge, it sat on the concrete floor in my garage for 3+ years. I went through the charging procedure on the optima website after OptimaJim posted in a thread and I'll be damned if the thing didn't come right back to life, it's in my XJ again as a matter of fact. Don't believe the hype, optima's aren't the problem batteries people would have you believe. the problem is if they are discharged below 10v a standard battery charger will not charge them, you need a charger designed to charge AGM style batteries (or use the parallel charging technique on optima's website which is what I did.) I just bought a new battery charger last week and it has a setting just for AGM batteries and it was only about 60 bucks.

I catch flak sometimes for defending optimas so much but mine is now almost 7 years old and it works just as good as it did the day I put it in, and for 3 years it was hooked to a custom wound alternator that charges 190 amps at idle, and 5 1000w amplifiers ;) If that's not pushing a battery to it's limits I don't know what is.
 
prepare to spill acid all over the place out of it, those are commercial batteries not meant to be tipped off camber. they sure make one hell of a mess when customers bring cores in. They also weigh at least 100 pounds.

And FWIW, Napa switched to Johnson Controls as their main battery supplier about a year or so ago, and now carries optima batteries instead of the exide orbitals we carried in the past.
 
Ah what the hell Grimm! I've got a red top that crapped out on me after only a couple years. Granted my truck has a pain in the ass drain that kills batteries after a few days of no use (starting to think it's the Clifford alarm). I recently bought a diehard battery charger from Sears, think it was the $99 model. Has a setting for AGM batteries & all its doing is telling me mine isn't any good!
 
It's not going to be going in my offroad rig it's going in the cheromanche which will be street only. Planning on mounting it in the bed on the passenger side front then running the cables up from there. I know it's the typical wet design with acid in it but it's got the most power out of any battery I've found, and with a reserve of 295 minutes it will be good for my future plans for the truck.

Edit: My offroad rig when I build it will be getting an odyssey PC2250 as it's got more power and longer reserve than any optima.
 
I've had both. Purchased an Odyssey for my TJ when I lived in Phoenix. Moved to Reno a year later and it died. Returned it for a new one. It was probably just defective or sat in a warehouse in the 110 degree desert for too long as the TJ was a brand new '06 Rubi. Sold the TJ when I moved out of Reno. Recently bought an XJ and an Optima was my first upgrade. So far so good.
 
OptimaJim said:
Hello, I noticed your conversation regarding our batteries and wanted to offer some assistance. Mike, I'm glad to hear you scored a good deal on your RedTop. If your small stereo ever gets large or you end up installing a winch, you'll probably want to move up to a YellowTop at that time.

The key to long battery life, regardless of brand, is good voltage maintenance. When batteries are discharged below 12.4 volts and allowed to sit in that state, sulfation begins to diminish both performance and lifespan. That is why we recommend a quality battery tender or maintainer for any vehicle that doesn't see regular use.

mjma, xcm, 98XJLongBuild, Planetcat, & clean4drxj, I'm glad to hear you've all had good experiences with your Optimas. The batteries we are producing today are the best we have ever built. If anyone has any questions about our batteries, I'll do my best to answer them.


Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries, Inc.
[URL="http://www.facebook.com/optimabatteries"]www.facebook.com/optimabatteries[/URL]
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Once I get a couple more road lamps and a winch Ill pick up a yellow top and the red top will go in the girlfriends car. Right now the jeep only has one set of daylighters and no stereo at all (n). That will all change within the year :D
 
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