I can see where that PC680 wouldn't have the reserve capacity of a bigger battery, it is only logical. But if you have a car that fires up quickly, or somewhat quickly, that little son of a gun really does the job. Obviously, if you can fit in a full sized battery there are some advantages, but for a space limited car like a hot rod, that 3 x 7 x 7 inch size can really solve a problem for you. Don
oh, and the Optima that I have in my daily, is one that was made after Johnson Controls bought them out and moved production to Mexico. It starts everyday and has not let me down yet (knock on wood)
You all want to talk about optima batteries, do it on the optima thread and there's plenty of them to bump. This ones about the little powerhouse odyssey batteries. Pound for pound and inch for inch the odyssey battery has no competition. There's nothing that comes close, hell there's nothing that even tries! If you built yourself into needing a powerful but small battery the odyssey will do it. And the other "O" battery will not fit anywhere that an odyssey will. Simple as that.
They have a huge reserve if they are fully charged. If its half charged it will still crank your lump but not as long.
Here's a link to some info SLA batteries that I found back in 2004, when I was looking around for a small battery. Most of it is a comparison of Dynabatt vs other types, but the Odyssey info is relevant to this thread. And theres lots of other info within the report, about maintaining SLA's etc.. BTW ,the prices quoted have almost doubled since the report was written!!. http://www.stealth316.com/2-dynabatt.htm
Earlier this week I was pressed into deciding to relocate a battery to the trunk or go with a smaller battery upfront. Weighed the extra time and materials of relocation vs the added expense of a small battery. It was 85.00 bucks more for an odyssey pc925 vs the conventional. I was way further ahead to go with the odyssey. The car is an OT car with an even more OT engine swap. This was the first cranking session for the engine ever since 2007, so there's a lot of cranking. Oil in cylinders- cranking. Oil pressure verification - cranking. Start Attempts- cranking. Check spark- cranking. Find bugs- cranking. Starting fluid - cranking. I'd guess there was an easy 5-6 mins of cranking with 20 sessions going on over the course of 2 hrs yesterday. That 925 cranked it like a champ!!!! And at 1/2 the size of a conventional battery.
Great info...believe the odyssey may better allow that exhaust to pass by than a conventional sized one....maybe I'll add some sort of dissipating heat shield between the two just in case... Thanks to all for the good info.
It depends which one you have. If you are running the tiniest one that will start your car, then yes. If you want, the have a few that you could probably drive your car to Chattanooga on the starter, if the starter would hold up.
The Jalopy Journal
