Quote:
Originally Posted by Frosty
I've never used them; just going by stuff I've read on car forums. Most of the recommendations I've seen have been for the Yellowtop over the Redtop. I don't know if that would have made a difference in your case. They are expensive batteries, in any case.
I had some problems with the last Interstate and they are well over $100 around here so switched to Kirkland, though we went with a Honda battery when my wife's CR-V needed one. It wasn't any more expensive than an aftermarket battery and was guaranteed to fit perfectly (really tight battery location). We got six years out of the first one.
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The way the Optima rep explained it to me was the color of the top signifies what the battery is suppose to be used for.
Red Tops are for your basic Hot Rod, Daily Driver, SUV etc. Your basic car battery.
Yellow Tops are for accessory loaded vehicles. Vehicles with a shit load of accessory lighting, massive stereo systems etc. You'd want a yellow top if it's an offroad vehicle with excessive lighting or for show cars that are going to sit there with all of its gadgets and stereo equipment on. If you're building the car right, ideally you would have both a red top and a yellow top in the car.
Blue Tops are for marine applications (boats etc).
That's pretty much all they offer. So if you REALLY want an Optima, you should be using a red top in your basic car.
Our shop ended up with a bunch of free Optima batteries that we couldnt do anything with. It's a shame too, because i personally set up the sponsorship with those guys and spent a lot of time on it.
At the end of the day, they were't dependable and we ended up having to swap Interstates into all of our cars.
About two years ago we discovered an AMAZING battery. It's ultra compact, which is great for us since often times we have to relocate the batteries to the trunk, has the same CCA as the larger Interstates and Optimas. I'm not sure if you can pick it up locally or not, but it's made by Odyssey.
Since we've started using Odyssey batteries, we haven't looked back since. The only other battery we'll use is an Interstate if it's going into a basic car.