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Just hooked up my WARN 8274, now what battery?

W

WantedaDodge

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So I just mounted a winch and bumper on my K5. I need to get a new battery for it anyway so it's time to get a new deep cycle. I plan on installing some KC 6x9s and some for lights down the road, but that's about the extent of it. Would like to stay with just one battery.

I found an Exide Deep Cycle locally that has 575 CCA and 730 CAs. Is this battery big enough for my needs? I will probably be upgrading the alternator down the road with something from Power Master if that makes a difference...

This is not a designated trail rid, it's a weekend run a much in the woods/light wheeler so the winch will get used but it probably will never be used for more then a few short pulls at a time.
 
Go to Sears and grab the biggest Platinum series battery that will fit in your battery tray. I was able to squeeze the biggest one, but I had to modify the tray slightly.

Excellent batteries. I ran the same battery in my cummins powered suburban, (yes, I only had 1 battery) and it never missed a beat. Even when I was on vacation in Colorado and I had to start it in 15 degree weather.

I also ran offroad lights, a winch, power inverter...ect.

Those batteries have a great warranty too.


Link to the battery I run:

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_02850065000P?mv=rr
 
I wouldn't be looking at any battery with less than 1000cca if you're going to be running a winch. I also would NEVER run an optima battery as they have become junk over the last 10 years. I am a loyal Interstate battery fan as i've been running them without issues for at least 20 years now (I get about 10 years out of a battery at minimum).
 
Like Scott said, Interstate makes good batteries.
And its really a shame about the Optimas. They turned out a heck of a battery for a while.

I'm blessed with a local independent battery shop. All they sell is batteries.
I know the guys pretty well, and have helped them out from time to time.

Couple of years ago, I went in to get an Optima for my truck and they basically told me they would not sell me one.

They had them, I could see them on the shelf. But they told me that I would not like it.
They had been getting too many returns on them.

They sold me one that they said would meet my specs, and it has been one heck of a battery.

I want to say it was an Exide, but I'm not sure. Truck is over at a friend's. I will look tomorrow if I get a chance.

BUT be careful about buying a Deep Cycle.
The term has gotten blended over the years lately, but the original deep cycles would not last a month on a truck.

You could not crank a truck engine with one and have it last.

Cranking batteries are made with thick heavy plates and connectors to handle the high current loads of cranking and winching.
But, if you run one close to dead, it will shed plate material and lose capacity.
Eventually that shed material will fill up the bottom and bridge the insulators causing a shorted cell.

Deep cycle batteries are made with thinner plates often embedded in a mat so that they do not shed very much.
Works great for long steady discharging, and running close to dead, but you will literally burn one up if you put a heavy load on it.

Believe me, I know.
I have had to explain to people why that big truck battery only lasted one year on their trolling motor, and I had to tell a friend why he had gone through 3 deep cycle batteries on his tractor in a month.

Problem now is, the lines have gotten blurred. Now they make deep cycle/cranking batteries.

Like Scott said, stick with the high CCA, and you should be fine.

My old truck, I had a split battery system. I had one battery for cranking, and one to run the rest of the truck.
My cranking battery was a big high CCA battery, but the other one was a big deep cycle.
I did not have to worry about leaving the radio on or lights.
 
Double check me but I think that the reputable manufacturers spec their amp/ pull speed chart by a minimum size of cca. I believe its 750 cca, so from how I understand it, if all connections are good, and if your motor is in good shape then theorically you should be able to do the same with your winch as the manufacturer stays. Anything above the minimum would be for '**** and giggles'!
 
So maybe I am cheaping out but I am poor right now! Thinking either this battery

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/detail/OSST/3478EXTJ.oap?year=1984&make=Chevrolet&model=K5%2BBlazer&vi=1050578&forcedVehicle=true&pt=03321&ppt=C0005

or this one

http://www.autozone.com/autozone/pa...es&fromString=search&itemIdentifier=31693_0_0_

And maybe save the extra hundred bucks for a dual battery conversion.

I am running an optima red top I stole out of my hotrod, but one of the two batteries above I think will give better performance. What say you?
 
I'm not gonna get into another whole battery tirade... but.....

the draw of the electrical component, is the draw.... doesn't matter if it's on a 700 CCA or 2 million CCA battery...

thats where reserve capacity comes in... as long as the battery has enough CA's to handle the load, it all boils down to reserve capacity at that point..

I like Interstates for wet bats and Lifeline's for AGM's...
 
I think that either of those will work fine for short pulls or normal travel. For the extreme runs or long pulls is were the two battery system will become, more valuable then gold to you. If you install two batteries, the easiest, cheapest, least problematic way to do it is to install them pos to pos, neg to neg. The biggest thing to remember is to make damn sure that each battery is exactly the same (manufactures AND capacities) if not you will have two dead batteries if its let sit for a week with two different batteries.
 
think we charge customers, like $106 for a grp #27 Interstate wet.. so that means we probably pay like $70 for em....

I really want a pair of grp 27 Lifelines,


images



but it's doubtful... i'd have to buy em, and they ain't cheap.. that's probably $500.... :eek1: and i get free interstate #27's any time i want.. sooooooo... :haha:
 
i think shipping kills any battery deal i could do probably... wtf would it cost to ship a battery i wonder?
 
ryoken said:
i think shipping kills any battery deal i could do probably... wtf would it cost to ship a battery i wonder?
Click to expand...

Well considering it is a box of corrosive chemicals you can't legally ship it, but people have shipped crazier things in the past and will continue to do so.

I'm good though as I only pay cost for them as it is so it's not that bad for me when I do need one.
 
good, same here worst case scenario... but it's easy to rotate a new battery out of the mix when ya store/maintain 100+ batteries..... as long as i have a core to rotate in the mix... then there are the times of the year when get a pair here and there that are 6 months old... i have 6 near new grp 27's down in my garage right now...
 
I think it would be easier to walk into the local dealer and sign for a voucher then mail it. I don't want my mail man tring to stick a battery in my mailbox, he has trouble with the funny paper!
 
Hello, I noticed your conversation regarding our batteries and wanted to offer some assistance. WantedaDodge, if you are only going to use one battery and you will be winching, you need to use a battery designed for deep-cycle use. Cold cranking amps are an important consideration if you live somewhere cold, but as long as your battery provides cranking amps equal to or greater than the OEM spec for your engine, you should make sure you get a deep-cycle battery with as much reserve capacity as possible. Our RedTops offer more cold cranking amps than their YellowTop counterparts, but they are not designed or intended for deep-cycle applications, including winching. That is also the case for many other starting batteries and their deep-cycle counterparts.

I can only speak for the batteries we manufacture and perhaps there is a difference in terminology between what I describe and what Fordum mentioned. Our SLI (starting/lighting/ignition) batteries are sometimes referred to as “cranking” batteries, because they are used primarily to start an engine and run basic electrical accessories. Our RedTops and 34M BlueTops would be included in this group. These batteries have thinner plates than their deep-cycle counterparts, to allow for more plate surface area in each battery, which provides more cranking power in the short bursts needed to start engines. Our YellowTops and BlueTops with light-gray cases are designed for both starting and deep-cycle applications. These batteries have thicker plates than their RedTop counterparts and are more resilient to applications where deep-cycling occurs. This link also provides a good explanation of the difference between the two types of batteries.

The quality of our batteries has always been excellent and continues to improve. Many of the “bad” batteries returned to us now are just deeply-discharged and work fine, when properly recharged. Unfortunately, many battery chargers will not recognize or charge any battery that has been discharged below a certain voltage threshold. This is not a situation unique to Optima, in fact, some other manufacturers have elected to void the warranty on their batteries, if they are discharged below 10 volts, which is a real concern if you plan on winching. We prefer to educate consumers about how to recharge these batteries and even created this video, which describes a parallel charging technique that can recover many of these batteries.

The key to long battery life, regardless of brand, is to make sure battery voltage is always maintained at least at 12.4 volts or above. When batteries are discharged below that level and allowed to sit, sulfation begins to diminish both capacity and performance. That makes a quality battery tender or maintainer an excellent investment for any vehicle that is not driven daily.

Fordum, I'm sorry to hear about the problems your retailer was having with our batteries. We'd like to contact them, to see if they are still experiencing any issues. If you could, please PM me their contact information.

mudbugggy is correct about batteries wired in parallel needing to be identical in size and type, but age is also important. If batteries are not identical in age, size and type, they need to be isolated from each other.

If anyone has any questions about our batteries, I'll do my best to answer them.


Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries, Inc.
www.facebook.com/optimabatteries
 
In regards to the Optima post.

I was an Optima guy for a long time. Never had any problems with the batteries, and as far as I could tell, an Optima was the best you could get. Same way with my friends.
Then the quality went downhill. Way down... To the point where neither myself, or anyone else that I know runs them.

It started with a yellow top that was in my land cruiser. Was less than a year old and developed an internal short. Optima mailed me another. It lasted about a year, and then it wouldn't hold a charge. Took it, had it tested, it was bad.

I ran a red top in my daily driven s10. It went up in smoke while i was sitting at a Sonic Drive in... Left me stranded there. Optima mailed me another, and it lasted until 08. When it died, so did my trust in Optima's quality. I purchased an Interstate and it is still going (sold the truck to a buddy).

Optimas service is very good. Anytime a battery died, I would have another one from FedEX within a few days. I just don't trust them anymore.


For what it's worth, I had no problems with Optima batteries up until 2006 I believe. I do know of one guythat still runs a red top, and has had no problems with it, but it was manufactured before 06.
 
Jim, I will check back with them next time I'm in town to see whats what. That info is at least 3, maybe 4 years old now.
I used to lose track of days, now I'm starting to lose track of years......

If they are still having trouble, I'll PM you the address plus tell them about you so you won't be contacting them blind.

Like I said, the lines have gotten blurred these days.

I remember when the first deep cycle batteries came out.

Minn Kota was just starting to come out with some decent sized trolling motors, and people were using big truck batteries to run them.
If they ran the batteries all the way down, like they did most weekends, by the end of the summer, the battery was toast.

Some battery makers started coming out with 1000AH deep cycle batteries. Those would last several years on trolling motor duty.

Since they were so big and lasted so well, lots of people started putting them on tractors or trucks.

And under those loads, it was not unusual for one to quit taking a charge completely in a week.
Some of these people would come to me to tell them what was wrong with their equipment.
After all, it had burned up two or three large batteries in a couple of weeks. Must be a short somewhere.

I ran into a battery rep at my friends' store, and asked him.
He showed me a couple of cutaways he had. The normal cranking battery had lead plates separated by fiberglass insulators.

The deep cycle had insulators too, but the lead was pretty much embedded in fiberglass mat-like things .
Looked like it was in the form of plugs.

He showed me another that had been brought it, and the lead had melted in places. He said that deep cycle batteries did not have the thickness of metal to handle high currents.

This, of course, would seem to go against what you said, and what is generally said about the difference between the types.

But, I think it is a matter of wording. A SLI battery has lots of thin plates to get more surface area in parallel to supply high current.
If you deep discharge it, there might not be enough plate left before charging to keep from buckling. Plus, the lead sulfate will shed off the plates if jostled. Not only removeing lead from use and eventually short out the plates.

A Deep cycle has thicker plates so more metal can be used up and can still be strong enough to stand up.
But, the original deep cycle batteries went a different way.
They increased the support size and type of support to keep the plates from shedding.

Nowadays, you can crank with most deep cycles, and the SLI batteries can stand deeper cycles than ever.
 
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