Anyone with the Optima yellow top battery, it's about one inch shorter than the stock battery. The tie down arms are only partly threaded, so they don't screw down far enough to hold the battery in place. I thought about putting a piece of wood under the battery to raise it up, but that seems like a bad idea to me. What have you done instead?

This might be a 5th gen problem, since I think 4th gens use the red top.

 

if you are using the stock tiedown bars, yes they will be too short...what i did was put washers under the bar to raise the point of contact to get it to snug down, or get the SWA tie down bars which should come with new shorter tie downs(the brackets)...

 

Get new j hooks from your local auto parts store. ~$4.99. The aftermarket j hooks have more threads.

 

Sweet, thanks for the replies. Right now I put a piece of wood under the battery to raise it up. Of course, now the battery sits high and isn't firmly seated in the battery tray, but at least I can tighten the j bars down to hold it firmly in place. I'll check the store for new j hooks.

I didn't want to get an aftermarket tie bar .

 

I've used the block of wood method ever since I put mine in.

 

I think the new j-arms will be worth it. It will make the battery sit more stable. Also, it looks a lot less ghetto .

 

Mine came with a plastic spacer on the bottom (detachable) just for cases like our cars.
-Cyrus

 

you could just cut an inch or 2 off like i did.. sand and paint the tops.. works fine for me.

 

An inch off the j-bar? The problem is, the threads stop high up on the bar, so you can't tighten the nut far enough down the j-bar to hold the battery snugly.

I'm getting the aftermarket j-bar where the threads go down further.

edit: Awesome sig pic .

 

in just used some rubber tubing to raise up the battery.

 

Here is a pic of what my Optima Red looked like before I bought the aftermarket J hooks from Autozone.



I decided to get the J hooks after an incident. A few of my friends in my car decided to be a smartalex so I did el swervo left to right a few times at night in a park so they bump their heads against eachother. Well after driving for 2 days after that incident, my car would not start. I checked the battery and the negative cable was loose. The woodblock there served me good til that night, but it was not secured enough to prevent the battery from moving therefore allowing the negative cable to come loose. I went to Autozone to have them charge it for free and picked up the j hooks.



- ßaller

 

mine seemed to fit...

http://images.cardomain.com/installs...48_82_full.jpg

 

Cut the non-threaded end and bend to fit the holes they feed into on the edge of the battery tray...then you have the entire threaded portion to adjust as you like.

 

if you have a tap and die set. Juss make more threads on the hooks. No need to buy anything and no need to hack anything.

 

I'd have to buy a tap and die set .

I'd rather not cut and bend the stock ones, cause I'll have to replace them later if I sell the car.

Aftermarket j-bars seem to be the way to go, and they shouldn't be too expensive.

Thanks all for the suggestions.

 

hahaha, that's so funny. I had my battery setup looking like Ballers for the longest time, and I thought I was the only one ghetto enough to do that

 

I used a die and threaded mine a little further down. The shorter battery height seems to expose the air filter on my pop charger better, so I didn't want to put anything under the battery to raise it.