Originally Posted by STRATTON red top optima, been a bunch of years and still going strong.
stratton.
Since they got bought out 2 years ago their quality is now crap. I went through 3 warranty returns in 5 months, when the one in my 510 had originally lasted almost 8 years. Pisses me off, get bought out and destroy them. All i run is interstate now, its who i used to run before optimas, and i havent had any issues yet.
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Originally Posted by NI "Caution- Bums Crapping Next 3 Miles"
I like Red Top Optima batteries as well. I recently replaced my fully abused* one after 7 years with another one. I know every couple of years someone comes out and says "now they are crap" but I've not found that to be the case. I always keep in mind that Optima batteries are always going to show a higher failure rate than normal batteries because they are almost exclusively bought by the car modification crowd and that crowd tends to do crazy and stupid things that will lower the life of their batteries significantly or highly increase their failure rate due to user error.
If for some reason I wasn't going to do an Optima, I would go with a factory Miata battery. Those are also dry/gel cell batteries and just like any other dry/gel cell car battery they should last 15 years with "proper" care and around half that with "normal" care.
*Tons of full drains, months and months of sitting with no activity, hours of cranking and cranking to get cold-start working on VEMS, complete shorting out of the terminals on one occasion.
I hear good things about the Kinetik brand. Most Audio enthusiasts run them, I think?
I'd run Optimas or Interstates. Really, any gel cell/dry cell will do great.
In all actuality, I have a cheap pep boys "gold" or "platinum" battery in the WRX and don't have any issues with it. When it dies, I'll move to something else, but for $50 it's money well spent...