I purchased a second hand optima yellow top from someone on ebay. The guy told me it was in excellent working condition, and that it runs fine, and was only used for a couple of months(who knows about that last one). But from wut i know, these battery's last quite a while and dont usually die out, so i trusted taking my chances with a second hand and got it for a good price ($100). So when i went to install it yesterday, it fit fine and everything, but when i went to start it up, the car had barely any power, nothing even close to starting it up, and i then had to jump it. I thought perhaps since the battery hadnt been used for a while, it could be that it was discharged and i thought driving around for a while could get the alternator to recharge it, but that didnt help either, as everytime i shut the car off, i needed a jump to restart. Now does anyone have ANY idea or clue as to why this may happen? do i have to put any kinda special stuff(that greenish-yellowish conducting material) on the terminals when i first install it? anything like this anyone has experienced with a yellow top? or is the battery just dead and i should return it? imma have my shop guy test out the battery this weekend and see what kinda juice its got, ill c how that goes

 

Sounds like the battery is dead. Sometimes, if a battery discharges too much - it cannot be recharged by just driving around - you need to put it on a charger (trickle charge it).

Not sure if buying a "used" battery from anywhere (including Ebay) is a good idea... one of those "penny wise, pound foolish" things.

 

I agree with njmodi. This happens all the time to batteries that sit on the shelf for a long time before being purchased. Get it charged and you should be good to go.

 

i believe you can get it charged at autozone try that as far as ebay goes sorry to you if you got ripped off.

 

hmm...i heard those optima batteries are pretty hard to kill. i would have your local tech check it out and see if it can hold a charge or not. good luck dude.

 

Try jumping the car or charging the batterey. They are very hard to kill. One of the good qualities of the optima is that you can run them dead then charge m back up like nothing ever happened. Try that out first.

 

sterlingmaxima ... you GD signature is so fukin funny. rotflmao

..... i know, .............

 

What was wrong with the car before just dead battery? It could be something else who know...