Best Car and light truck batteries

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Originally Posted By: JimPghPA
Anyhow, with the bad talk about Die-Hard and Wall Mart batteries, and knowing from other means that Sears and Wall Mart are now very closely connected on the corporate level


Say what? They're entirely separate companies.
 
Does anybody know how many line of group size 75 johnson control makes? I heard group 75 was the most common size of car battery.
 
I'm a big fan of Deka batteries if you can get them. They are a true American battery manufacturer and in my opinion make one of the best batteries money can buy. If you are lucky enough to live close to the plant in PA you can get scratch and ding batteries for cheap.

For those who do not know Johnson controls owns Optima and is why they are no longer a quality battery. Johnson controls decided they were going to cut corners and not use the highest quality lead and manufacture the batteries in mexico.
 
When i asked johnson control about group 75! how many line or version!They said that proprietary information.
 
L_Sludger from Cincinnati post on anoter thread here on BITOG:

"I just bought a brand new Interstate Mega-Tron Plus MTP-24F 1000CA battery from Firestone for $74 out the door (no core charge), and its sitting in my garage right now. The battery looks like it was just made, and the folks at the shop told me that it got there from the truck just last week."



I am no fan of Firestone, especially since they talked my youngest brothr into un-necessarly replacing the air-pressure sensors when he had the first replacement set of tires put on his car and they toped off that by inproperly installing them and all 4 leaked when it got cold out. But that is one heck of a great price for a 1000 CCA Interstate Battery.
 
Big difference between a "1000CA" and a "1000CCA" rated battery- also why not check the date code yourself stamped right on the battery to determine accurate "build date" instead of believing the salesman??/
 
Great thread. I think when I need a new battery for my Saturn I'll pickup a Kirkland from Costco (being as its apparently made by JC)

Always wondered about who made what.. Looks like Energizer made by JC too. Got one for my fathers' Nissan from Wal-Mart and that thing has been cranking perfectly too in this cold winter.

Nice. :)
 
Originally Posted By: JimPghPA
I only expect to get 4 and 3/4 years out of any battery even if they say 6 year life. I replace them at 4 and 3/4 and never have a car get stranded due to the battery.

A good general rule is to always get the largest cold cranking amps you can get in the largest plain jane nothing fancy battery.
And expect the battery to fail any time after 4 and 3/4 years regardless if the rating is for 5 or 6 years.

JimPghPa
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I have a patient in my therapy office right now who retired from east Penn manufacturing and he sold Deka batteries. He said Meijer batteries are Deka's. He is probably biased, but he swears by the technology. They have a neat website too.
 
If you get a nice top-off charger | desulphator your battery will thank you and last forever..
Something like batteryminder control unit with a nice polycrystalline solar panel will do you a lot of service for your automotive needs and beyond
 
A couple of notes that nobody has mentioned here. Sears contracts with both Exide and Johnson controls for their Diehard brand... in some parts of the country you get one or the other.

Several years ago they were involved in a lengthy and well publicized court battle with Exide over their high failure rate. If you look it up you will even find mail fraud charges, as Exide faked some tests and mailed them to Sears!

A Walmart Everlast battery I bought about 6 years ago ( the smallest one they sell, 29.95) says Johnson controls on it and is still working well.

A walmart Everlast I bought 2 years ago says Exide on it... and is corroding badly. Exide was still using lead plates alloyed with antimony last I knew, and they still outgas quite a bit.

The Johnson Controls batteries are lead-calcium and do not outgas hardly at all, and generally do not corrode the terminals.

Those of you with an unregulated battery charger can easily tell which type you have:

A lead- antimony battery will never go much over 14.4 volts and will accept about 2 amps at that voltage even after they are fully charged. That, of course results in electrolysis, with attendant loss of water and outgasing.

The lead-calcium batteries... when fully charged... pretty much just shut the door on incoming current, the voltage may rise well above 15 volts with less than one amp going in.
They never need water added, as the pretty much totally avoid the electrolysis by no longer accepting incoming current.

Running this test, you will find the two types are markedly different!

Lead Calcium batteries also have a very low rate of self-discharge... just losing their charge sitting around. They easily hold a charge for 6 months or more when stored - with no load.

Lead Antimony batteries autodischarge, they can loose 1 percent a day and be considered normal.


Nobody but Exide makes lead-antimony batteries anymore to my knowledge.
 
I viewed the Interstate Batteries site on January 2, 2010 when it had the map of the life expectancy shown in sections, for North America and Canada.

Interstate Batteries has changed their web site and the current version has no link to that information.
 
Never had a problem with a walmart (EverStart) batter. The fact that they got 3 year replacement, 5-year pro-rate, that's appealing :)

With the Florida heat, average battery life here is about 24 months though....lol. So I bet they get their share of returns (those who go for the more expensive "MAXX" brand that is).

Their "Value" batteries are only 1 year replacement, 6 month pro-rate afaik.
 
I have had the best Luck with:

Ac-Delco
Interstate
Deka

Currently have been using the Deka brand for 4 years now in various applications with no issues.
 
Originally Posted By: JimPghPA

Another site (if I remember correctly it was by Interstate) said that Interstate used many taxi cabs in Las-Vegas to heat test there batteries and develop them to be durable and last.



In the front of my Motorcraft battery book it says that the BXT-65-650 Tested Tough Max battery was tested/developed in the Las Vegas taxi cabs.
 
I dont replace them until they leave me stranded but I also carry one of those black and decker self jump start things so I don't need to worry about finding someone to give me a jump. It also has an air pump, light, DC to AC inverter and alternator checker all in one unit was about 100 bucks at wal mart.
 
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