Optima 6V battery lasts forever, well almost

Went to start my old 54 Lincoln and the battery was dead. Put a charge on it and heard a click. Thinking it was the voltage regulator, I disconnected the battery lead, but still heard a click. It turned out to be the horn relay, but the horns are disconnected.

There must be some sort of gremlin in the steering column or a wire finally shorted out and left the horn relay to discharge the battery. The battery of course was my 12 year old Optima, and it won't take a charge no more.

In conclusion, I think the Optima batteries are great and only die from some phenomenom outside of the battery itself.

 

12 years , can,t complain about that.

 

I still take all my batterys out if the car is going to sit for a while even if its a optima.

 

I just bought a Autozone 6 volt for my Imperial yesterday for 69.99. Wonder how long its gonna last. I was looking at the optima at AutoBarn with free shipping $150.

We shall see.

 

There is a slight possibility it is still good, but is so discharged that the charger thinks it's bad (shorted) and thus won't do its thing. Try charging it with another non-Optima battery in parallel (pos to pos, neg to neg) and see if the Optima comes back to life - you have nothing to lose.

 

new streetrodder has a pretty good article by a guy at optima about resurecting discharged batterys. most battery chargers wont charge a battery thats under 10 volts or so. so you gotta put a known good battery in parallel with the discharged one to fool your charger into inducing a charge. low amp slooowww chargre will probably bring her back.

edit: bfc beat me to the punch!

 

Ive been moving one from daily to daily driver for like 7 years now. And have had some killer stereos beat the hell out of it. Wont buy anything different, except for when i go to sell the car

 

Save your old American made Optima batteries rather than buying the new foreign built ones.

Sorry, a little rant.

 

We put a a six volt optima in a Lincoln "tar-top" logo'd case in a 1948 Lincoln cabriolet and it didn't last six months. Then we had four or five dead omtimas come into the shop within six weeks.

 

new optima's suck.
I guess they used to be good when they were made by Gates.

 

i have a new 6 and 12 under the bench.. i refuse to use them in anything unless its for an emergency.

 

They will die if you discharge it deep. Can't be brought back to life as regular water filled batteries

 

That's what I am afraid of. I wonder if I can fool the charger by putting a simple resistive load (say 16 ohms at 25 watts). That should make the charger think it has a load. I have very simple chargers that do not have all that micropressor technology built in. I can charge at 1 amp with my homebrew one. So I will try this.

I just hope that $150 for a new Optima gets me another great battery and not a POS.

 

I normally do this, at least disconnect one lead, but that CRS got me this time. Man am I pissed, and that damn horn wiring. Guess that damn car is telling me to rewire it.