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Grueling side by side battery test *hey Optima Jim!*

tRustyK5

tRustyK5

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OK, so when I bought my '90 Blazer it had an eight year old Interstate battery in it. The truck needed a jump start to initially start it when I bought it. I felt the battery needed replacing, so shortly after getting it home I splurged on a Red Top Optima.

Seeing as I've had some issues with both batteries, I figured I would charge both up to 100% and put them both to the arduous task of doing nothing. :haha:

Background on the interstate battery, a little over 9 years old now and it's been sitting dead flat for about 10 months now. Voltage check when I dug it out of my shop was 6.86 volts. Optimism was low, but I stuck it on the trusty old battery charger until it was no longer drawing anything.

You can clearly see it was purchased in August 2002

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After 8 hours off the charger I put the multimeter on it and saw:

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It's not hooked up to anything...

Next up is my newish Optima, and honestly this battery is the reason for this whole thing. I felt my truck had a key off draw that was killing my batteries. So, a while back I charged the optima up fully and because I knew the truck would sit unused for a while I disconnected the leads from the battery. I was surprised to find it dead a few short weeks later.

this is the optima, less than 1 year old:

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And this is what the Optima read a few hours off the charger and being 100% charged.

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If it matters, ambient temperature is a balmy 62 F. Shouldn't matter as both are sitting under the same hood right now.

i will be checking batt voltage once each day and adding the pic's here over the next two weeks or so.
 
maybe a dumb ?, but are they both hooked up to the Blazer then Rene'?
 
Nope, neither are hooked up at all. The optima is in the tray without cables hooked up, the Interstate is sitting on the carbon canister thing also hooked up to nothing.

My Optima doesn't hold a charge, this will be slow painful proof of a bad battery I think. The Interstate batt is just my idle curiousity, and maybe a comparison of a tired lead acid battery that has been abused, vs. a newish Optima that should be superior in every way.

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Only slightly off topic, and I am sure I have posted this here before, but what the heck.

For a long time, every truck I or my friends had was equipped with a winch. Whenever one of them would get a new truck, I got the job of installing the winch off the old one.
When the first side mount battery came out, we were stumped for a little while. Then we found a slightly longer bolt, put the winch power cable on and tightened the new bolt down snug.

Worked great until about a week later, his truck would not start. Jumped it off, drove it for a while, and it would not crank again.
He called me to ask if the winch could be killing the battery. I told him is shouldn't, but we decided to pull the cable off just in case.

Backed the bolt out about two turns, and it fell out with a bunch of corrosion.
The whole end of the bolt was eaten away.
While we were cleaning up the connections, I noticed a drop of liquid drip out of the bolt hole and start bubbling on the battery mount.

Turns out the back side of the side terminal is lead, and it is real easy to screw a bolt right through to the acid.

After that, we used a longer bolt with a nut. Put the nut on first, then the cables, and then screw the bolt down until it just bottoms out.
Back it off a half turn or so, and hold it while you tighten the nut down on the cables.

Seeing that long bolt brought back memories.

BTW we fixed that battery by filling the back of the terminal with silicone rubber and putting in a clean bolt.
 
I have had better luck bringing back lead acid batteries than dry cells.

With that said, brought back some very dead optimas with 6hr on, 6hr off 2 amp charge for a few days and still using today.

Both good and offer great starting imo. I would like to see how these results turn up.

However I think an equal load of some sort for a monitored time would show more.
Blower motor, bulb, radio, speaker, something,

I like the blower motor cuz they will run the battery down to nothing
 
Well, I figure no load as a start was as good a place to start as any mostly to officially repeat observed data. Once that is done I will do load testing. Blower fan sounds good to me. Full charge for both, run fan for each until dead while recording the time it took.

Honestly the Interstate battery was a whim on my part. It was in the "to be recycled" pile...
 
I have brought back a couple of my optimas by just putting on the charger for a couple days on a slow charge.

Both a red top and yellow top. Of course neither of those would hold a charge for longer than a day anyway. Both of em going strong now
 
I may have to try that. Not posting official numbers yet, but I will say the Optima already has a lower voltage than the interstate.

Honestly, I'd love this Optima to just work as advertised.
 
My Optima in my Trans Am wouldn't hold a charge if I charged it for a day and it was "fully charged". A guy at the store suggested I put it on the charger for a few days, so I did. The thing has worked like a champ ever since, and it is like 6 years old now, almost 7.
 
I'm going with the interstate AGM for my next battery. best of both worlds in my opinion.
 
I have an interstate AGM in my bike, 5 years now.
 
5 years on a bike battery is pretty good. mine never went past 3
 
Blaze said:
My Optima in my Trans Am wouldn't hold a charge if I charged it for a day and it was "fully charged". A guy at the store suggested I put it on the charger for a few days, so I did. The thing has worked like a champ ever since, and it is like 6 years old now, almost 7.
Click to expand...

Same here

I'm still using an optima ii bought in 2003. It floats from race car to race car, from car to car. Take road trips with me. Goes camping.

I'm pretty sold after this one
 
Ill never buy a battery that isnt an interstate.

I had a Interstate MT78 sitting in my parents garage for a year and a half I think, put it back in my 79 this weekend, it almost started the truck too but I had to bust out the cables. That battery has to be 5 to 6 years old too.
 
What's considered "slow" charge? My lowest setting is 10 amps save the 6 volt setting which I don't think would work.
 
My charger has a 12V 2 amp setting, and a 12V 6 amp setting. On the 6 amp setting the draw was off the scale, so I charged it at the 2 amp setting until it said it was at 75% or so, then when I switched to the 6 amp setting it was at least not bending the needle on the scale. total time on the charger was about 20 hours.

Optima today, 12.18 volts

Interstate today, 12.39 volts
 
Theres a bunch of videos on you tube about how to bring an optima back and make it work better.

Have you thought about finding out if the truck is the problem? Done a miliamp draw test to see if it is pulling the battery down?
 
I've done that...10 milliamp draw with the key off. As I understand it, that is not a significant draw. I pulled every single fuse in that truck one at a time trying to find what it was that was drawing that little bit of power, but never did find it.
 
The other trick to bringing a dry cell back is to hook it to a good charged battery and then charge both of them at the same time. The charged battery does something along the lines of exciting the dead one and allows it to take a charge.


That being said optimas are junk. Go to sears and get a die hard platinum. Its an AGM, rebranded odyssey which is like almost a $300 battery and is one of the best batteries on the market.
 
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