Just wanted to give observations of my 27 months with a Yellow Top.

Battery installed in May 2011, at 111,xxx miles. Car now has 143,xxx miles.

Car eats a battery every 2 years no matter what. Healthy appetite! Doesn't help I live in florida and up until today, I was ignorant of the proper placement of a battery in our cars -- I read the tsb today and it's the first time I've "properly" installed it.

I'll let y'all know in 2 years if following the tsb actually helps the life of the battery.

The difference between lead-acid and the AGM / spiral thing Optima does is that the lead-acids usually give me one or two slow cranks, and if I ignore those few warning signs, it'll just refuse to turn over one fine day. Stranded!

The Optima, on the other hand, appears to have a linear death curve: it keeps turning, just slower and slower.. no cliff.

The symptom was very slow cranking, long starts cold or hot, plus on a cold start you could see the cabin lights dim badly to the beat of the engine as it turned over. Once it caught and it was on alternator, the lights came up bright. Interesting to note that it seems to run on battery for the first 5 or so seconds, then it goes on alt.

Car starts great again.

Stay away from Advanced Auto Parts, btw.. they didn't honor the 36 month warranty, kept hemming and hawing and blaming it on computer problems. seeing as how it was going to be a prorate anyway, I just cut my losses, went to the competition across the street, and bought a new yellow top there with my old one as core. Not even showing Advanced the original sales receipt, with the printing still perfectly legible helped. The guy at the Advanced counter did raise an eyebrow at the fact that it was in the book along with every scrap of work done to this car.

Lesson learned; Advanced's word is worth absolutely nothing. I"ll make sure corporate hears about it.

2nd lesson learned: Optima's worth it just for the fact that it gave me so much warning, as compared to what a lead-acid would've done to me.

Is it worth 2x over? Who knows. I wanted an Interstate MTP-35, but no one had it here today -- and I wanted it today, not next week, not tomorrow. To-day. Merchants snooze, they lose.

 

Advanced Auto part has been nice to me, I had to returned my Yellow top once and all they had to do was they had to charge it with their machine, but of course it didn't work (battery was down to 1.5v, come on now!)

then I got a new battery an hour later.

but seriously next time, I will just spend a bit more and get an Odyssey or Sears Die Hard Platinum instead.

 

the optimas are picky batteries, they don't seem to like heat, vibration, and don't tolerate being charged incorrectly, so they have no business in an automobile.

 

Try a Platinum Diehard if you have any warranty problems with this one.

 

I have had a red top in for the past three years and no problems yet. Just curious to what you have going on in your car that it kills your batteries so quick?

 

Ehe title on the thread is incorrect. 27 months, not 15. =o/ Havne't found a way to change that.

2nd, it's Florida. It gets insanely hot with high RH%, and on top of that, I do a fair bit of crawling in 1st gear in downtown north miami to and from work. But I have a good 40 miles a day that's not crawling, so overall I'd say she's more of a highway car.

3rd, up until yesterday, I had the battery in wrong, with no cooling space as dictated by TSB. The one i just put in Friday is the first one I've done following TSB.

Else, she's 100% bone-*** stock, no aftermarket alarms or stereos, no mods other than strakes and accents (that's al bling, not mods, so..)

She's a daily driver, has always been so, and I bought her new. Most of the time she gets 60 miles / day, except for 2 years where she got 30 a day. 3/4 of that is highway.

I"m used to it. IT's the miata I had that spoiled me, it was an AGM by Panasonic and went in the trunk, that battery lasted TEN YEARS. I shouted it because it still weirds me out that I got that much out of a battery! And she was a daily driver too, same song, 60 / day..

 

I've been hearing great things about Panasonic battery on other cars.

the reason I got my Optima is because I got around 160 bux after all rebates and discount.