yea its late but i cant sleep cause i cant stop thinking of my car since i'll finally be able to drive it tomorrow for the first time in a week.

Anyway, i have went through 2 yellow top batteries within a 1 year period due to weakness and it makes me wonder if the yellow top is really the best optima battery. It seems to be the most expensive but the red top has a longer warranty plus more cranks and cold cranks. I'm also getting 3 year warranty vs 1 year from yellow top. This is 3 years of full free replacement at my nearest autozone (where i bought it from).

i'm running:

Eclipse AV8022
PG 900X5 channel amp
SAFC
EGT gauge
FP gauge
7k HIDs
LED bulbs
Summit switch

i didnt have all this when it died the first time but i dont consider my system a high powered system, plus my batteries seem to die faster than usual. I do spend a lot of time at night watching movies with friends but i heard this battery was used at meets for hours with no issues....last time my alternator was tested it had good voltage or whatever.

But how many people are running a high powered system with red top battery? thats what i'm using now and if it seems to do worst than the yellow then i'll work from there....

 

Red top man. Yea yellow cost more. We use red tops on our military vehicles. And those are 24 volt systems with computer and **** running off of them. Get red top. I had a red top and was running 2 10in fosgate subs with DEI 800watt amp and never once had a case of the flickering lights with the bass. We run our red tops in our trucks down to the very last drop of power and then hook em up to the charger overnight and presto, good as new.

 

What type of wiring do you have mecca?

I have an exide battery with 0 ga and I have had any problems.

 

mecca,

Turn everything off and put a multi-meter on your battery to see what kind of amp drain you're seeing. Try it again with the car running and everything on.

I'm betting you have either a short or a weak alternator.

 

I had a pretty good thread/post on this. My red top is working great since my yellow died on me early.

I have been in a few threads about this
HEre is just one:
http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=135828

 

i'm running 4 gauge wire across everything. if this battery dies i'm going to do a test like u recommended ice.

 

red top is a regular starting battery not ment for high drain setups....IE stereos thats what yellows are for. yellow tops are deep cycle so you can leave the car off with the lights on kill it and it will recharge no problem. I dont think yellows were ment to start cars everyday, but they do. You have another problem, there is no way a yellow top would die in a 6 month period.

 

not even 6 months, maybe 3-4. I dont know what it could be. What else could drain that much? and these were tested at autozone before giving the final thumbs down...

 

It really doesn't take much to drain a battery. My wife had a Dodge Shadow 10 years ago. Every 2 days or so the battery would die. Nobody could find why. It wasn't showing a drain. Finally, I took it to an electrical specialist and he found a bad ground in the stock radio wiring. I ran all new wiring and it solved the problem.

 

My yellow top died after a year.

Got a Red top, and the lights don't dim as much when the bass hits and I left the dome light on for 7 days at one point - it started fine.

Red Top all the way - more CCA.

And they're both Deep Cycle.

 

Get your alternator tested

 

Alternator was replaced last year under recall and charges just fine.