OPTIMA batteries
Race Director
Joined: Feb 2003
Posts: 11,672
Likes: 20
From: Lake Wylie SC
About the only thing that shortens a good battery's life is the Vette being parked for weeks at a time without a charger that is designed to keep it fully charged. It's hard on a battery to let it lose charge and then boost it. A good maintainer keeps it in good shape. Another thought on this subject is that an alternator will heat up when charging a low charged battery. Older C4's had a terrible time with this.
Burning Brakes
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 804
Likes: 5
From: Fresno CA
About the only thing that shortens a good battery's life is the Vette being parked for weeks at a time without a charger that is designed to keep it fully charged. It's hard on a battery to let it lose charge and then boost it. A good maintainer keeps it in good shape. Another thought on this subject is that an alternator will heat up when charging a low charged battery. Older C4's had a terrible time with this.
I work on Ford GT's for clients which come stock with an Optima and I have replaced quite a few of them for just that reason; when they sit for weeks at a time and go dead more than 4 or 5 times they will not load test and you will have replace them. I know quite a few guys who run the deep cycle ones in their boats and have the same issue. For that reason, I frequently hard wire battery tenders into the FGT's and when you keep the optima on a tender there shouldn't be an issue. As was stated earlier in the thread, they are great batteries as long as you keep them charged between use.
