Looking for a battery for my car.

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I thought you owned a brz?

 

[olds]

Since the battery is hard to get to (didn't watch videos):
If I was not going to keep the car more than a couple of years, I'd get a middle of the road battery.
If I was going to keep the car, I'd get the best battery I could find regardless of cost. I's also consider relocating the battery.

 

[jlee]

If you call float charging "charging" then sure but a car that gets a lot of short trips, lots of electrical accessory usage, etc. will have a burned out alternator relatively quickly. It takes about 15 minutes of driving to recharge the energy lost in cranking the engine and that's hoping that the electricity sapping electronics you've got running aren't competing for that energy. This is why the Prius is such a superior vehicle because it *should never have this issue.

I think our definitions of "superior vehicle" differ slightly.

 

[BUTCH1]

Like I said, it puts quite the drain which is why it takes so long to recharge. 15 minutes of charging isn't actually that long when you consider that it can take hours to charge a 50ah battery. Since most cars don't have excessively high charging voltages but usually around 13.2-14.1, charging times are actually longer than on a dedicated battery charger. A car that has a charging voltage of 13.2 will take a very long time to charge the battery which is why I mention the whole 15 minutes to restore lost charge due to engine cranking. But that's just engine cranking, what about all the lost power from the parasitic electronics? And then the best of all, the smart key system on some cars which is a HUGE parasitic draw. Alarm + Smart Key + Heated Seats + frequent engine cranking + short drives = dead battery in a year or two if you don't do periodic charging.

Prius doesn't have this issue as much (smart key is a killer though) because the hybrid battery does all the cranking and the hybrid battery to 12v converter always keeps the 12v battery fairly well topped off until you get towards the end of life. On one older prius, the owner didn't want to replace the 12V battery right away even though it's 10 years old and has a resting voltage of 11.5, so I turned off the smart key system which had the effect of boosting the fuel economy from an abysmal 40mpg to 47mpg average. That's what you get when you have a weak/bad battery!

Used to be if a car had a lot of electrical accessories the Mfgr. would install a bigger battery and a higher-output Alt. as well but not anymore. My car has heated seats, heated mirrors, rear defroster, remote start, power seats, windows, moon-roof, and after-blow but it calls for the same battery and Alt as a standard 4 cylinder Malibu uses and it's tiny IMO, my '95 Escort had a bigger battery and it had a small 1.8L engine, even the factory Delco battery didn't make it through the 3 yr warranty period, I had it replaced under warranty in the 29th month.

 

[QueBert]

I usually buy the longer lasting "premium" battery but I've never spent more than $100 on a car battery in my life and I've never had a battery fail in under 4 years of daily use.

You're throwing money away if you're buying a $400 battery and I doubt that it would last any longer than any other battery.

Guessing you've never had a heavily upgraded car stereo, in these cases a battery will make a big difference. I'm adding 2 amps and a sub in a few months. A low end battery will get chewed up in a year. Deep cycle batteries are the way to go, and anything outside of a Optima will die well before it's rated life. I went thru about 5 cheap batteries over the same amount of time I had my Optima. I ran my Duralast Gold completly dead 4 times and the battery was toast. My Yellow Top I ran it dry about 30 times and it would still hold close to 90% of the original max charge. I would get a Northstar battery, but they don't make one that fits my car.

I thought you owned a brz?

I was looking at them, and was about 2 days away from getting an FRS, but I test drove the Sky Redline and the speed difference sold me on it.

 

[Meghan54]

Guessing you've never had a heavily upgraded car stereo, in these cases a battery will make a big difference. I'm adding 2 amps and a sub in a few months. A low end battery will get chewed up in a year. Deep cycle batteries are the way to go, and anything outside of a Optima will die well before it's rated life. I went thru about 5 cheap batteries over the same amount of time I had my Optima. I ran my Duralast Gold completly dead 4 times and the battery was toast. My Yellow Top I ran it dry about 30 times and it would still hold close to 90% of the original max charge. I would get a Northstar battery, but they don't make one that fits my car.

Optimas are junk these days. At least that's what I've been seeing and hearing from friends who've used them extensively and had them fail rapidly under regular normal use in boats.

Exide branded seem to work well for years, at least the pair I have on my boat have lasted 7 years and are still charging/discharging well. And when they finally puke, more Exides will be put in their place.

Couldn't pay me to take an Optima. At least not until their reputation gets better than it has been the last half decade.

 

[QueBert]

The group 47 will fit, but it's a L/H battery where a group 86 is R/H. Google isn't telling me much, but from what I gather that's which side of the battery the polarity is on. Glad I did some more research before just ordering the batter assuming I could make it fit. Never even thought about left and right side for polarity. I could extend the cables but that seems like a lot of work just for a battery. Oddessy has a 20% sale going on right now, I can get an Extreme for $225 shipped, it's the best battery I've found sub $350.

 

[RLGL]

Interstate, the only way to go.

 

[disappoint]

Guessing you've never had a heavily upgraded car stereo, in these cases a battery will make a big difference. I'm adding 2 amps and a sub in a few months. A low end battery will get chewed up in a year. Deep cycle batteries are the way to go, and anything outside of a Optima will die well before it's rated life. I went thru about 5 cheap batteries over the same amount of time I had my Optima. I ran my Duralast Gold completly dead 4 times and the battery was toast. My Yellow Top I ran it dry about 30 times and it would still hold close to 90% of the original max charge. I would get a Northstar battery, but they don't make one that fits my car.

How did you measure the percentage of original max charge?

 

[QueBert]

How did you measure the percentage of original max charge?

About once a month I would run in ACC mode with my stereo on until it died. I always started playing the stereo at the same time so when it died by looking at the clock I knew how long it lasted. I did this maybe 40 times over the time I had the battery. I suppose it wasn't a highly technical laboratory test, but made it pretty easy to figure out how much of a hit the battery took after each full drain.