Anyone revived an optima yellow top?

[Ben824]

I have an Optima yellow top that I got brand new about 5 years ago and it has started to loose its charge when it sits for over 24 hours. I used to drive it everyday multiple times a day so I have no idea how long it has been going bad since once the Jeep runs for about 15 mins the battery is fine for the next time I start it as long as its within a 24 hour window. I checked around the Jeep to see if anything seemed to be drawing power while the Jeep was off and to my knowledge there isn't. The only thing usiing power while it is off is the Viper alarm I have in it but it has been in there for 6 1/2 years and never killed the battery before.

I took it to autozone where I bought it and had them test it and they said it was bad.

I then called Optima to see if they could tell me anything about maybe reviving this thing and they asked me to check the voltage which was 12.37 and they said it needs to be somewhere between 13 and 13.5 so it is definitely starting to go bad. The guy on the phone told me that I could try completely draining the battery and then charging it back up with a charger and repeating this process about 3-4 times and that may bring it back.

My question is has anyone ever tried this on their Optima and did it work? Or has anyone ever successfully revived a wore out Optima a different way?

 

[old_man]

This is one of the more common failure modes. Don't bother asking how I know.:flame:

 

[Milford Cubicle II]

Be happy that you got 5 years out of it and go buy a new (not optima) battery.

 

[Shorty]

don't bother trying to recharge it, all Optimas are garbage 'cuz they're made in Mexico-- I read it on the internet, so it must be true:rof:

try charging it in parallel with another fully charged battery. Use a relatively high amp charger (10amp-ish) for the first couple hours and turn it down to 2amp for about 24 hrs. If it will not come back to life after that, you may need to invest in a new battery. 5 years for a battery isn't unheard of, but it's sooner than I would expect a well taken care-of battery to fail.

 

[dave92cherokee]

I would recommend taking it to oreilly's or advance as they have AGM testers and chargers. The crappy testers that the AZ people use test traditional lead acid "wet" batteries. I had oreilly's hook up my red top overnight on their charger and the next day it passed their tests but when I got it back home and hooked up it'd already lost all it's power. Next battery I get will either be an odyssey or a duralast gold as they're pretty powerful and last a while from what I've seen.

 

[FlexdXJ]

Took a 40A charger to revive my die hard platinum....might try that.

 

[Ben824]

Well my charger has a 50A engine start function if the regular charge doesn't do it then I will try that next. I really hope I can revive this thing because I do not have the money to buy even a cheap battery since apparently batteries now cost minimum $70. What happened to the days when you could get a cheap battery for $30?

 

[in4aride]

Treat it like one of their marine batteries. Charge is Very slowly. too fast of a charge can make it worse

 

[Ben824]

ill do that on the next repeat. My charger has three settings 2A, 10A, 50A Engine Start. I currently have it on 10A. Next time I drain it and recharge it I will use the 2A setting.

 

[J Pugh]

How about don't use a yellow top? Right? I mean, isn't that the quickest, easiest way to destroy a deep cycle battery? Just DDing with it as your primary(solitary) batt?

 

[Milford Cubicle II]

Um, no?

Deep cycle batteries don't *need* to be deep cycled to stay healthy.

 

[J Pugh]

Ok, nm then, I always thought it was bad for them. I guess I had deep cycle batteries and Li-ion batteries cross wired in my brain.

 

[Ghost]

Be happy that you got 5 years out of it and go buy a new (not optima) battery.

This! My first red top lasted 4 years. Second laster one after it was eaten by my ac compressor. Third one lasted barley 2. I will not buy another Optima nor will I recommend them again.