I agree with what you said. I have 4 red tops in my various cars. My vette is not a DD so it spends a lot of time in the role of garage queen. The Battery Minder Plus is attached to the Optima Red Top in my Corvette 24/7. When I take my vette out for a spin, as I did yesterday, it never fails to start right up.

I have tried many other battery tenders over the past 8 years, but they seem to cook the battery juice inside the Optima and ruin the battery. I even tried a yellow top, but that died too and the merchant would not honor the free replacement warranty period. Since I have a red top now combined with the Battery Minder Plus, I believe that I finally found the right combo for this car. I will not use a traditional battery in my vette because of the wiring harness below it. I stopped using traditional batteries in all of my cars 8 years ago due to damage caused by leaking acid in a few of my other cars.

 

I've had the red top for about a year now, no problems and I don't use a battery tender. Car sits for a couple weeks, fires right up, no problems. I think the problem with some of the batteries is that that have sat in a wharehouse for a long time before they are purchased and therefore are no longer serviceable. I once purchased and Oddesey motorcycle battery, fairly expensive and it could not take a charge when I got it home. By checking the codes on the battery, I was able to ascertain that it had been manufactured more than a year before I purchased it. I ordered it at a motorcycle and they sent it back. The Oddeseys are good batteries but not if they sit for a year unattended.

 

Hi, If deltran told you that the junior will not keep your optima at peak, they have pretty much admitted that the junior is not right for AGM's/Optima. And when you look at the specs you know that anyway. Yet they still market the junior for AGM types, when every battery engineer knows that if a battery is not maintained at peak, it will not last as long as one that is maintained at peak, it really is just that simple. If you spend as much on a battery as an optima cost, relative to other choices, don't you want it to last as long as it is engineered to? Deltran is doing it's customers a diservice by not informing them of what you say they told you. And I'm not doubting that someone there told you that,because it is the fact.
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QUOTE,>I've been following this thread since it started, but some of the information in here is admittedly rather confusing to me. I have an Optima red top in my '01 Z06, and I recently ordered a Battery Tender Plus to use on the car. As of this moment I am still waiting for it to arrive.

Is the general consensus here that a Battery Tender Plus will or will not work on an Optima battery?

I'm rather baffled by the number of problems people seem to have with their batteries. My car is driven only once or twice per month, and it is usually for a short distance of no more than 18 miles. Other than that, the car just sleeps in the garage. I've had the Optima red top in it for about nine months now, and never once has the car been dead or slow to start.

I'm curious as to why I appear to be lucky in this case. I've been watching my battery voltage on the DIC when starting, driving, and parking the car. What is considered a "normal" reading?<QUOTE
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I can't speak for the consensus, but the point some of us have been trying to make is that just because a Company markets a maintainer saying it is capable of maintaining an AGM, it is not always to be believed. You have to read the specs, and listen to real world experience. Wording is everything. If a company says our maintainer will work with a specific battery, that is not the same thing as saying that our maintainer will keep a specific battery at peak charge. If Deltrans Tender Plus lives up to its specs, then it should be able to keep an AGM at peak charge. .(Personally I prefer the BatteryMinder Plus, because of it's pulse mode which can condition/desulphate a battery), but it's normal Tender, and the Junior won't.
To address your other statement about the type of use you give your battery, I would say that I firmly believe that you will soon experience battery failure, way before the batteries intended day of obsolesence. My guess is it will not go 4 years or even less, when it could very easily last 8 or more with proper maintenance. Now mind you I am not wishing this on you, or anyone, the reason I post all the info I have learned is to help others learn the basics. You can't change the laws of physics and the technology at hand. The type of use you do will eventually without a doubt sulphate the battery beyond use.
To illustrate that point I'll mention my Mustang,(alright nobody flame me because I had a Mustang), I bought it new in 1989, never used a mantainer on it, only used it for shows about 500 miles a year. The 4th year the battery failed and needed to be replaced. I replaced it with an exact oem duplicate Motorcraft. By then I had heard about maintainers, and went to sears and bought their brand for 25.00 and used it from that day on whenever I wasn't using the car for a day or more. I sold the car with 6000 miles on it last year and the 13 year old battery was still starting the car. I did have to add water occaisonally, but it was still in good condition. I still have the Sears maintainer being used on another battery, but wouldn't use it on an AGM, because it's technology is to old for an AGM.Good Luck