Latest Thoughts on Batteries?

[Eoth]

Sorry to open up Pandora's Box, but its been about 16 years since my last battery purchase. AGMs are cheaper, brands have gone in and out of favor, heck, lithium is now an option. Anything interesting to look into?

 

[Chiclassics]

Autozone Duralast GOLD- 5yrs still going good.
AGM might be too good for a regular truck unless you have lot of electrical load like screens, audio systems etc

 

[1969]

Forget about the battery.. buy the best and most accessible warranty because they are all junk now.

 

[bronco italiano]

I went Deka intimidator AGM for my bronco

 

[nvrstuk]

AGM all the way. Never spills, no fumes, can mount it on it's side. Lot's of benefits.

Deka is good.

I bought a Oreilly's Super Start or Intimidator?? (I'm a long ways from home but I could call John if you want? He's my Navy Seal buddy who always stays at our place when we are gone. He loves it but we really love him being there. ) AGM that was supposed to be made by Deka over 10 yrs ago. It was top and side post. I looked it up and they don't come with the side posts anymore which will screw me up when I need a new one but that's what always happens... lol

I have drained it totally dead a few times. So dead and LED light won't glow.

 

[.94 OR]

I built a tray for mine to accept the same size battery as my F150.
I picked up a Motorcraft battery a while back on a recommendation from SteveL I believe that they are as good as a guy could expect.
This way, if either the pickup or EB battery goes dead, I can swap it over and keep driving.

 

[Broncobowsher]

AGM. No reason for flooded cell these days. Oddessey (Northstar) has been a pretty good pick for me for several years. Getting more life out of those than others are getting out of other choices. Failures are soft, as in a cold morning you are getting a slightly slower cranking speed. And even then you still have time. In ~15 years and several vehicles running the batteries, I have never needed the warranty.

Pass on the lithium. They have temperature issues. I run some on the camper, but keep them indoors so they stay under the upper temp limit (roughly 140°) and don't charge below freezing (most now have cold temp protection in the BMS). I just got one as a starting battery for the boat. But that doesn't put the battery anywhere near the thermal limits. I don't boat when below freezing, not in a hot engine bay, stored in a garage, etc.

 

[Timmy390]

Big fan of East Penn Manufacturing. They make Deka and a bunch of other brands. I run Sam's Club Duracell AGM's made by East Penn in most of my rigs including my bass boat. Good price point an good longevity. That said the battery on my Bronco is a Wal Mart EverStart flooded. It's 5 years old or so and it just keeps cranking.

Tim

 

[bronco italiano]

AGM all the way. Never spills, no fumes, can mount it on it's side. Lot's of benefits.

Deka is good.

I bought a Oreilly's Super Start or Intimidator?? (I'm a long ways from home but I could call John if you want? He's my Navy Seal buddy who always stays at our place when we are gone. He loves it but we really love him being there. ) AGM that was supposed to be made by Deka over 10 yrs ago. It was top and side post. I looked it up and they don't come with the side posts anymore which will screw me up when I need a new one but that's what always happens... lol

I have drained it totally dead a few times. So dead and LED light won't glow.

Deka should have a top/side post in 24 size. I got one from Battery Bil on my buddies bronco. My F250 needed a larger battery (27F) and went with post and stud top, but had to be a different brand as Deka did not make one.

 

[Steve83]

Ford still offers an 8 year warranty on the TestedToughMAX (BXT-) series, so that's all I use in all of my trucks. BXT-65-850. If you pay the dealer to install it, you get even more benefits, like free testing & warranty installation. I install my own.

(click this text)

AGM all the way. Never spills, no fumes, can mount it on it's side. Lot's of benefits.

I've never spilled a flooded-cell battery, nor noticed any fumes from one, and all my vehicles work OK with the battery mounted upright. So I don't see any advantage to AGM. Most of them have a shorter warranty, lower output, & don't handle deep cycles as well as flooded.

 

[Apogee]

Just my $.02, but flooded cell and AGM both have their place, and there are certain flooded cell batteries (usually larger semi-truck, school bus, etc applications) that get hot-melt glue put in the bottom of the battery boxes during assembly to help prevent failure due to vibration. I run flooded cell in my forklift, as it gets a lot of start/stop without a lot of charging/run time, so the flooded cell tend to last longer, though I've recently added a NOCO battery maintainer, so I guess I could switch to run either at this point. That said, I run AGM in my pickups and EB, as I've had a few premature failures with flooded cell in my life due to dead cells, most often caused by strap failures, shorts and dropped plates. AGM batteries use compression of the separator material (absorbent glass matt, aka AGM) to protect against vibration and suspend the electrolyte, which has worked quite well for me over the years and seems to function as advertised.

At the end of the day, there are only a select few lead-acid battery manufacturers in North America, so your "Fill in the Blank" battery was more than likely made by one of them. Walmart and Autozone and Napa don't make batteries, they sell them...same for Ford, GM, Dodge, Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes, etc. Take a tour through East Penn Mfg (DEKA) and you will see stickers at the end of their assembly lines for just about every brand of battery you can imagine. They even have dedicated production lines just for the OEM's building cars in North America, mostly the more particular ones (think German). Unfortunately, since batteries are contractually manufactured items, the Ford TestedToughMax (BXT-) series batteries for example may be made by one manufacturer this year, maybe East Penn Mfg, and another next year, maybe Exide or Hawker or Johnson Controls (back when they still made batteries), so you can't count on what's good today necessarily being as good tomorrow. For how simple a lead-acid battery is on the surface, the level of quality control of the design, materials and manufacturing processes is what determines the end product, and it varies even within a single plant or production line.

 

[nvrstuk]

(click this text)


I've never spilled a flooded-cell battery, nor noticed any fumes from one, and all my vehicles work OK with the battery mounted upright. So I don't see any advantage to AGM. Most of them have a shorter warranty, lower output, & don't handle deep cycles as well as flooded.

Advantages for me why I'll only use AGM

¹- much more rugged & withstand vibration & shock much better than typical lead acid

²- No explosive fumes-grandfather had a lead acid blowup

³- no case compromise issues. Buddy was wheeling and his case got a hole cut into it by a pulley & he just strapped it down,. Kept wheeling & drove it 1200miles home
³- some physical situations you need a big battery with little space & they can be mounted horizontally
⁴! Posts NEVER get corrosion on them from wheeling & bouncing. To me this is a huge advantage for a guy that wheels/drives his rig over bouncy roads ALL the time.
When I went with JCPenny (yup-kid ya not) gel type whatever battery back in the mid '80's for my terrible 1/2 mile long rough as heck driveway I have never regretted it.

These are clear advantages for someone like me. Maybe not the rest of the world.


Like Bowsher said lithium don't like cold. I was goingnto mention this since those of us on Timber Sleds are moving away from lithium because we are out there in zero deg F snow days & many dirt bikes come with lithium which is great for a desert race but not sbow play.

 

[ntsqd]

They did it wrong, but I got to experience a battery blowing up. It made a very loud bang and a huge mess! I'd rather not ever do that again!

Just now putting LiFePO4 "house" batteries in the camper. We'll see how well they work. The premium brand GC2 AGM's they're replacing barely made it out of their warranty period. I wouldn't install a Li starting battery. I have gotten pretty good service out of the Odyssey Group 65 that has been in the FSB for about 3 years. It's seen some oopsies and off-road abuse, and it just keeps working.
I put an Intimidator in the Wagon, but too little time and miles on it to have anything to report.

 

[Apogee]

I'm not sure if it's still true, but Odyssey/Hawker/Enersys/whatever they're called these days always made some of the nicest lead-acid grids and plates in the business back when I was in it (~20 years ago). They used higher purity lead in their grid-casting and their pasting process seemed to generate superior plates (with respect to paste adhesion to the grid) versus many of their competitors, but their price point seemed to reflect that. They had the contract for the Sears Platinum series of batteries back in the day for a while, and it was the most affordable way to get one...that's what I ran in everything when they were available. I've been through the ups and downs with Optima, which was amazing pre-2000 (aside from having a lower power density), before Johnson Controls bought them, at which time they became more marketing and less performance oriented, and I haven't revisited them since their sale to a private equity group (Clarion) in 2019. I moved from Optima to Hawker/Enersys Odyssey batteries after that through Sears, and then once Sears went belly-up, I moved to the DEKA Intimidator batteries and have had pretty good luck with them overall. I do think the Odyssey battery is superior to the DEKA Intimidator, just at a higher price point.

 

[Eoth]

Thanks guys! All good points, just wanted to refresh the topic. My current battery is an Optima Yellow Top and has served me very well. Unfortunately, the brand has fallen out of favor as the premium performance as it once was.

 

[Broncobowsher]

Optima was great, went poor, and I consider them mid class these days. Stuck in there spiral cell, which was great in the day, but only good these days. It's not something I would avoid, won't call them bad. But not remarkable either. If you have a custom battery tray that fits one, well you are going to get another, or a different tray.

Talking to the Optima rep at SEMA once they explained there coloring scheme. Red is top post (maybe side as well), Yellow is dual post, blue is threaded post only. Black case is starting battery, gray case is deep cycle.

 

[bmbm]

In about 2009 I bought a 2005 Sierra. It lives in northern NV and I am away for months at a time the longest was almost six months. When I get there I just turn the key and it starts, winter or summer, at least the last time it did November 2025 and I have never touched it. Same battery all these years, a Napa Premium I think it is called. Don't know how useful this will be now as a good chance Napa gets cheaper batteries nowadays from chiner or something but if that battery ever fails I am going to get another Napa premium battery.

 

[ntsqd]

Optima has strayed from that color coding in the recent past. In about 2019 or so I bought a 20 blue tops that came out of a contactor test bank at my then employer. They all had SAE top posts with a threaded stud next to that.

 

[duffymahoney]

Best of the best is solid state lithium, but they are spendy

 

[AZ73]

Big fan of East Penn Manufacturing. They make Deka and a bunch of other brands. I run Sam's Club Duracell AGM's made by East Penn in most of my rigs including my bass boat. Good price point an good longevity. That said the battery on my Bronco is a Wal Mart EverStart flooded. It's 5 years old or so and it just keeps cranking.

Tim

East Penn fan too. They make the factory battery for US built BMW X5s. The great news is it's the exact same battery at O'reilly's with a Super Start Platinum AGM sticker, and $100 less. 4 year Warranty but one is on year 11 and the other is on year 9, all in Arizona heat.