jfb

f----ng battery on the olds died again today,fully charged all winter etc no corrosion new cables plus starter and grounds correct hot shot solenoid new also. . I seem to not be able to find a battery manufacturer who sells quality batterys. I was wondering who you guys by batterys from this is getting expensive and ridiculous. I have tried auto z crap and w mart. I used to be able to get at least 5 years with a fully charged battery all year long no room left for plate breakdown the quality is s--t now. please respond with positive results that are fact based.

coppercutlass

Usually interstate battery's rank up there on my personal favorites but this year i went with oddessy battery's half the size half the wheight and twice the cranking power. The PCM-925 is what i got. Battery service in bensenville sells them for 160 i think And they deliver for free. New battery from auto crap is 145 ish so going with a much better one for slightly more is a no brainer.

This is just the link to the one im running. I also used one in my dads car .

http://www.batterymart.com/p-odyssey...L-battery.html

jcdynamic88

i've been selling and using interstate batteries for 25 years at least and i'm getting 7-8 years out of them and replacing before they fail.i always use the higher end one available.i have also had very good luck with delco,not quite as available at a good price.

stevengerard

Costco batteries are actually Interstate batteries, I'd try them. I have a couple of those and a couple of Delco - they all work well - until they don't. Some have lasted 5 years a few 8.

olds 307 and 403

Interstate batteries are about the best. Batteries just aren't as good as a few years ago, should be the opposite. I didn't even get 3 years out of a Walmart battery. Their deep cycle batteries seem better but now have **** poor warranties.

steve442

I just replaces my 13yr old AC Delco battery in my Cutlass with a new AC Delco battery. Seem like good batterys to me.

1970cs

I have an AZ gold battery in my 70 for 15 years! Still going strong.
I also have a Delco in the Alero, it's now 11.5 years old, still cranking the car up.

Pat

BlueCalais79

I go with A/C Delco, they hold up well, 5 years or so and if you are having your car judged at shows you generally won't get points taken off.

m371961

If you use a trickle charger it is a good idea to give it a boost charge of 30 amps or so once a month. It helps clean the plates in the batteries.

brown7373

Also, check that your voltage regulator is working properly. Too little voltage leaves a weak battery, but too much will fry the battery and greatly shorten it's life. Since you seem to have a recurring problem, I would make sure it is in fact lousy batteries and not a bad regulator.

joe_padavano

I've got cheapo WalMart batteries in several of my cars and have had no problems whatsoever. Five years minimum is the norm. I certainly can't complain, given the price. I broke down and put an Optima Red Top in my crewcab dually (back when Costco was selling them) and the first one lasted about seven years. I'm on the second one now.

jfb

I read all posts my autos--t gold is what died and I keep all of my batterys at full charge all year long even winter time.. I have a 125 amp/ even at idle/ alternator with upgraded wiring/I put more engineering time in with m/h wiring and of course planning. I am surprised with todays technology that quality and cost effectiveness do not flow together often it should be the opposite. by the way anybody still using diehards they were the best, but there quality dropped off. I have sears store 2.5 miles away.

twintracks

I run mostly Napa batteries. I don't keep them charged all winter. When I park them in October or November, I just disconnect the battery + and close the hood. That's it until spring. All of the clocks work in my cars, so I have to, but I would anyway for safety. I've done this all my life, and I have no problems with batteries going bad, and never any battery fuzz, summer or winter. KISS principle in action I guess, but it works for me. The Toro started in January for these photos, and a run after sitting for months, and it was near zero. Just great cars!

BlueCalais79

I second the comment above on the trickle charger, this is the 2nd winter I used them on my cars (my Hurst seems to drain worse than my blue Calais) made by Battery Tender, I think? The green label ones. Anyway, due to our horribly hard winter that just passed, I was not able to touch my 79 H/O until this past weekend. I had the Battery Tender on it since last November. I was not able to start it even once, and the car fired right up. I believe the battery is on year 3. It's the way to go.

droldsmorland

Yes Die-Hard...literally. I have a 14 year old Die-Hard gold. It was $90 back in 01. The same one is 180 now....

70cutty

Optima for me, in all my cars, even wife's Suburban. I have them on cheap HF trickle charger for months at the time with no problems.

Tedd Thompson

I have a interstate on the Old's now but the last one only lasted a little over year but I have been fighting voltage regulator/ generator problems for two years so I blame that for the short life... on the other hand I have cheapo Walmart battery on my boat and ignore it for 6 months at a time and it won't die, gotta be 6 years at least old maybe more. Who would know?...Tedd

chip-powell

I use Energizer (yes, they make car batteries too). They are inexpensive and have a very long life. The one in my '02 Jetta has been cranking away with no problems for 9 years. The one in my '71 cutlass for the past 2 (with 4 months of storage each winter w/o a tender keeping it charged.).

bob p

I am hard on batteries, as I have several cars that I let sit. In the modern cars that drain power in the key-off state the batteries are dead meat if they're not kept on a tender. I also have a problem where passengers will occasionally leave the back seat personal spot-lights on, which stay on when the ignition is turned off. If I don't catch it the car may sit for a several days and the battery will go into deep discharge. I used to use GM's AC Delco Pro batteries because they handled the deep discharge situation better than anything else.

When GM owned AC Delco they used to make two lines of batteries. The Delco Pro batteries used to be the best battery you could buy. I bought them at wholesale, and I'd consistently get 6-7 years out of them, even though they were routinely subjected to deep discharge events.

My last "real" Delco Pro battery failed on Christmas Eve -- 9 months after the free exchange period had expired and the pro-rata warranty started. The pro-rata warranty was not very good -- It was going to cost more to replace the battery via the pro-rata warranty than to just buy a new one, because the pro-rata replacement is based upon MSRP pricing.

When I called into have a replacement delivered, my distributor told me that the new Delco battery would have a shorter warranty than my existing one because GM/Delco wasn't making the Delco batteries any more. The Delco batteries aren't as good as they used to be. I checked at Delco's web site and sure enough -- Delco has also changed the duration of their warranty, so it's now a short duration, non-prorata warranty. Investigating further, I found out that GM had sold the AC Delco battery factory to Johnson Controls, Inc. (NYSE:JCI), so now all of the Delco-branded batteries are just another JCI product and the quality is no different, the warranty is no different, and only the price is different. I stopped buying them.

I ended up buying a replacement Interstate battery at Costco. Same short warranty without proration. Cheapest price anywhere.

I also had a Wal-Mart EverMaxx battery in an F-150 that was kept on a solar charger. It froze in winter during the free exchange period. The replacement lasted 6 years and it just got replaced by another Costco Interstate battery.

What's the common denominator? JCI is the largest manufacturer of batteries in North America, followed by Exide. JCI makes Optima, Interstate, Delco, Die Hard (Sears), DuraLast (AutoZone), Kirkland (Costco), EverMaxx (Wal-Mart), and ProStart. You might as well just shop by price.

bob p

found this with google:

http://bestbatterytips.com/tags/who-...ate-batteries/

In other words, you really don't have much of a choice, you just have the illusion of choice.

70cutty

Just because they are owned by Johnson Controls it doesn't mean that the batteries are manufactured in the same way and to the same quality standards.

wr1970

^^^^^This !!

bob p

The logic makes sense. To some extent this is like looking at a glass of water and trying to decide if it's half empty or half full. Is there any reason to believe that the quality standards have to be different? Or is there reason to believe that they don't have to be different? Much of the time the difference in price on a battery will relate the manufacturer's cost of warranty risk, or the amortized cost of providing a replacement should it fail. It's possible to pay two different prices for the same battery just because the more expensive one has a longer warranty duration, and that price difference factors in the risk associated with absorbing the cost of a warranty replacement. In the past 2 years, we've seen most if not all of the battery warranties change, so that now the warranties are very much the same among all of these brands. Why? Could it be that in the era of ISO 9000 manufacturing standards, battery manufacturing has become standardized to the point that the batteries produced by ISO certified plants are all equivalent? Or do they have to be different because we perceive one brand name to be better than the other? That's what VAR is all about.

In the era of global industrialization the battery industry has been consolidated to the point that global battery manufacturing capacity rests in the hands of only a few mega-suppliers. JCI controls the largest share of the North American market, and several overseas markets as well. JCI now produces more than 25 different battery brands. It's not cost effective for a manufacturer to maintain 25 different production lines for 25 different labels at 25 different quality standards. Most of the product differentiation has to do with packaging, brand labelling, perceived VAR associated with brand labelling, warranty duration and commensurate pricing tiers.

I recently paid $65 for a Deka-brand AGM battery for an American motorcycle instead of paying $120 for the exact same battery with a premium label on it. The purchasing engineer for the vehicle manufacturer told me exactly what product he buys for their premium-branded application. The price varies by 2x depending upon whether the same AGM battery insert is sealed into a black case or a white case, and whose name gets stencilled on it.

Similarly, I had the choice of paying $180 MSRP for the premium-branded JCI-Delco battery, or $85 for the generic Kirkland-branded JCI-Interstate battery. That's also a 2x price difference. Both had the same warranty. Quality standards? My JCI-Costco and JCI-Wal-Mart batteries were all top-quality batteries. In this case I don't know for a fact what inserts are being shoved into the battery cases, but I don't have any reason to believe that the JCI-Delco is going to last twice as good as the JCI-Kirkland just because it retails for twice the price. Of course, I could be wrong on that, but I'm willing to take that risk.

droldsmorland

Great, yet another great homogeneous blob of goods under the corporate bean counters all mighty sword. Whats the incentive to produce a premium product for those who want to have a product a step above...none...SOL.

Hecho en Mexico, 中国制造 Zhōngguó zhìzào. Learn it so you can communicate with your kids in 10 -20 years and apply for medicare.

Bob, How are you obtaining the insert information? I too have been playing with batteries for many years from Motorcycle/lawn garden size to 8Ds. If there's any way to know whats what internally that'd be nice from a cost savings stand point. Whats the sense of paying top dollar for a homogenized battery just cuz it says Diehard when in fact its a Costco in cloak.

don71

I can only offer one insight. The battery industry like any other has changed by buyouts and take overs.

Some of the operations still occur under the same roof or plant(under a different name). The important part to remember they are held to ISO specs. The equipment or system within the varying plants may be different. They all simply have to be held to the same quality requirements.

Will you get the same battery? Maybe. Maybe not. In the future they will be the same. I call it a transition period.

From a consumer point of view, learn how to date batteries (like tires) and don't buy an old one. In the same vein, the chance of getting a good battery and a bad one are still the same.

They sit right along side each other at your choice of purchase.

bob p

I agree 100% with Don's preceding post. Buyouts and changeovers are a fact of life. I think that GM sold the AC Delco battery plant to JCI as part of the GM bankruptcy, but I'm not sure about that.

> What's the incentive to produce a premium product...?

The whole idea behind establishing enough market power to create a corporate monopoly is to be able to produce something of acceptable quality, while squashing anyone who might try to market a competing product. Regardless of whether the competing product is better or worse, the monopoly plan is to marginalize the competitor in the marketplace and render them insignificant. Large conglomerates routinely buy competitors just to eliminate them from the marketplace. Uniformity is the invariable result.

I don't have direct access to any trade secrets about batteries, but I do have someone in the industry who is willing to answer my questions on a need-to-know basis for vehicles that I own. I didn't hesitate to buy the Costco battery. It was only a month old.

QMaster

Nice Toro, Twintracks!

Allan R

^^ this. The best part is Costco beats everyone I've seen for pricing and warranty. The battery in my 07 Sonata is the one it was born with. Still ticking and the multimeter says no problems with its charge. Prolly change it in the fall though because winters here are brutal on cold starts. I checked with the dealer and it's close to 240.00. Same size/capacity at Costco is 95.00 with an 8 year guarantee. Just bring in the old battery core when you do the buy.

Ever notice how some cars won't take any size battery? Has to be size and code specific?

jfb

I like that someone knows the different types of batterys that is great now just a little deeper do they make all batterys from Costco and sears in a,b,c grade, I do not want to have issues when I get around and Saturday looks almost perfect for some work and riding, remember I have much more compression than stock and at the track my car gets hot from running but I do carshows also. I understand jci makes several brands but autozone is one of there recievers. so the question stands do they make different grades? or Costco looks good and diehards would be the same quality. and more expensive.. I want quality. thanks jfb by the way my regulator is new and so is the wiring and no corrosion period anywhere.

bob p

Costco doesn't maintain 3 different battery choices in any of the group sizes. They offer one choice per group size. There's no picking grade A, B or C.

You're worried about high compression? Have you seen the thread about slow cranking on my "ultra high-compression" 394 Sky Rocket? It was due to an improperly rebuilt starter. I borrowed the Costco battery out of my truck to crank the 394 without ignition hooked up for extended periods while I was diagnosing my fuel pump and starter problems. I cranked the battery hard, for extended periods, which was enough to literally smoke a low torque starter. I mean magic smoke coming out of the burned up starter. Once I got the starter rebuilt properly, my same Costco battery had no problem cranking it FAST. Once the ignition was ready I used the same battery to start-stop the car 20 or so more times, immediately turning it off, with no idling or recharging during the entire week. I abused that battery nonstop for a week, extended cranks and several starts per day, without letting the motor run and without recharging it. It was still cranking strong when I decided to put it on a charger overnight for one night and then I did it all over again for another week.

I bought mine in December. There's no 8-year warranty any more. It's the standard JCI warranty, which is somewhere around 40 months or something like that. New JCI battery is good, new JCI warranty is crap, Costco price was the lowest I could find. By about $40-$50.

Greg Rogers

I have had 2 Optima red tops for years. I'll bet the oldest one 12 years. Still going strong. I don't even take very good care of them anymore. I now have a old plow truck that gets used only at my place in the winter so I started using one of my 2 Optimas in it in the winter and then use them in the summer in my old cars. I accidentally dropped one off a bench on its top! It hit on the floor upside down directly on the top posts! I figured it was a goner but it still works fine. They sure are pricey though..

rccktmn2

Got 2 optima red tops and one yellow, all three 6+ years old and still going strong, the only catch is following the directions on charging. My question is why not do a parasitic draw test on your car before condemning the battery? Aftermarket stereos, clocks, etc will draw some amperage especially sitting all winter. I would expect my battery to be a little low after winter, probably not dead but my 70 has no parasitic draw whatsoever.

stevengerard

Here is another option if you want. Supposedly the lead they use is purer than any other manufacturer and its American made. I'd like to try one of these next time. I have read many places that battery life is a crap shoot. one could last 4 years the next one in line 9.

http://www.odysseybatteries.com/

jfb

I am glad I asked questions here there is a lot knowledge around, in todays world. I now understand and thanks bob. I use to be before all of the buyouts etc of corporations a believer in the longest warranty possible and around 4 to 5 year natural replacement. I always took the smart route and avoided tows and embarrassing jumps and hassles. I did it with class and by myself and a life long voyage. I guess to put this to a point the world has changed and jci is part of it I am hoping that all costcos batterys and not just what we see are grade a to grade b. I work with oem parts and then aftermarket a,b,c,d etc. I also bought a interstate for my daily driver through our vendor and still in about 6 weeks and again, no problems with my car the battery began to dump. I also noticed it had a 1 year sitting period. I received a immediate replacement of course and now everything is fine. I have had no problems for 5 mths. it is a shame that things have changed so much out there before it was as simple as staying disciplined and getting the job done right/ now you are lucky to get it right with so many bs choices of parts. I feel that as a community we can help each other with as much knowledge as possible.

bob p

Parasitic draw in today's vehicles can be really hard on batteries that sit. On the motorcycles I'd get no more than 2 seasons out of a conventional lead-acid battery before it failed, and that was keeping it on a tender. Motorcycle batteries just don't last like car batteries do. Heat is a real problem because of close proximity to the engine and limited airflow. To avoid inconvenient failures and being stranded somewhere I had to buy new batteries at the beginning of every riding season.

When Deka came out with the AGM batteries for bikes, I got 5 years (!) of solid performance out of my V-twin superbike that had a teeny little AGM battery in the tail. The only reason that the AGM battery died was because the tender mistakenly got unplugged during the winter, and the parasitic draw from the instrument cluster wiped out the battery with deep discharge over a period of months. I hate parasitic draw vehicles. They're a PITA.

On classic cars I'm not surprised that people are getting great lifespans, because the old cars don't have parasitic draws when the key is off. If you look at how a car battery loses charge over a period of months, the rate of spontaneous discharge is very slow in cold weather. (Here's an example from Yuasa Battery.)



That means that a fully charged battery in good condition should be able to make it through the winter no problem without being on a charger. What complicates matters is that today's cars all pull current in the key-off state, and as more computers and displays are added to cars the problem only gets worse. So you can't charge a battery and then let it sit for months in a modern vehicle. Parasitic draw is the kiss of death unless you have some kind of tender device.

I don't like the cheep Chinese battery trickle chargers. I've never had good luck with them. I have a pair of little "Battery Tender" devices that are great. Unlike the simple chargers the "tenders" are microprocessor controlled. They monitor charging voltage and current, and use a sophisticated algorithm to monitor the state of charge in the battery, and then modulate the tender's output accordingly. I've been using these things for 20 years, and I'm convinced that they definitely prolong battery life on the vehicles that don't get driven every day.

jfb

I have a cut off switch on my olds I never stated this before so I have no loss that is seen. I called Costco today and I could be wrong a 55 membership first then around 85 for a good quality battery and by the way Costco now only carries side terminals. that is 140 plus tax I do not have a membership and have no need for it, I do not buy in bulk. I have gathered from info that all batterys including Costco and sears are built the same. Now how good are walmarts joe padavano talked about them but I still ask are there different grades a,b,c grades otherwise it is just cost that counts. by the way I did not contact Walmart how much cost and the cca,s. I see different grades of autobody parts form the same manufacturer a lot. a,b,c. I have until Friday night. this is all good info for all of us lets finish this joe.

70cutty

Do your self a favor and buy an Optima red. Do a little research on the net and you'll see why are they one of the best.

Lady72nRob71

I have an 8 year old Walmart battery that is still cranking strong. It served 4 years in the '72 Olds and the other 4 in the Pinto (winter daily driver). Still going...
I use timed 1A chargers when the cars are in storage and check acid levels now and then. I added twice i think.
Keeping the battery from sulfating internally (with proper charging/floating and working charging system) is the key to long life.

bob p

If you're not a member at Costco, then buying a Costco battery makes no sense. But you can still get some valuable information from the Costco pricing:

I recently saw an interview with the Costco CEO, where he said their corporate policy was that nothing that they sell has more than a 15% markup over their wholesale cost. Costco's business model is to sell merchandise at a small enough markup that it allows them to cover the store's overhead and break even. The profits at Costco come from the membership fees, not the merchandise. Their whole business model revolves around having low prices in the store to lure you into paying the membership fee, and just breaking even on what you actually buy in the store.

Knowing the Costco price tells you a lot about the true wholesale cost of batteries, and how much profit is built into selling batteries. It's very easy to pay a lot more somewhere else, and to not get anything better for your money. It pays to shop around.

edit: In December I bought a Costco battery for my F-150 that has top posts. Maybe they only carry side posts in some group sizes?

bob p

I haven't bought that many Wal-Mart batteries, but here's what I can tell you about the ones that I did buy.

I bought the A-grade, 850 CCA, EverMaxx product for my F-150. The truck used to be a daily driver until it was replaced by a Suburban. Now it's 25 years old and it only gets used for hauling. I've had three Wal-Mart / EverMaxx / JCI batteries in it.

- The first one lasted 7 years with only occasional driving.

- The second one lasted only a couple of years. It never gave me a problem until I let it sit for several months. It failed during the winter because the vehicle wasn't getting driven and the charge ran low enough to allow the battery to freeze and bulge. The freeze ruined the plates, and I got a free replacement.

- The third one (replacement) lasted 6 years with only rare use, less than once every few months.

When the third one finally died I went back to Wal-Mart to buy a fourth one, and the price was so high that I went to Costco and got it for about 2/3 of the price.

Overall, I was very happy with the JCI EverMaxx batteries that I bought at Wal-Mart. The only reason that I didn't buy another was because the same JCI battery was cheapest at Costco.