Optima battery question

[Rhino]

Larry, I'm charging an optima battery with an optima charger. In the past I've used the parallel battery charging method however the selling point of the Optima charger is that it's "set and forget". It actually requires you select the particular type of Optima (red/yellow/blue) so one could assume the intelligence within the charger would inherently know how to charge the battery without additional voodoo. After reading Jim's response maybe I should continue doing so for low voltage batteries.
It must do some sort of active monitoring given what the LCD shows throughout the charge process. The charging rate does vary quite considerably. It did put 12 - 13 Amps to the battery at times. The battery was left connected and unused in a vehicle for about 9 months, and was quite dead. It's possible the charger was aware of the potential sulfation and acted accordingly. Your theory of a voltage cutoff for charging does make absolute sense in this scenario. The LCD on the charger mentions it's "conditioning" prior to the charge point. After 2 of these cycles the battery did begin to charge.

Jim, Thanks for the info. I have no scientific evidence to back it up, however my comment about higher incidence of failure does not come from one individual experience. I'm also completely ignoring "tribal knowledge" from both internet and local gearheads (which you have to take with a grain of salt). I'm speaking from first hand experience with a number of batteries in a hand full of vehicles I've owned for 10+ years.
At first I didn't believe there was a difference until I jumped whole hog into using optimas and did so again after having some fail what I felt to be prematurely. When a particular battery wasn't available for a quick replacement I went back to a standard battery. So far it's outlasted both individual red tops. In my experience, standard battery time to replacement has been much longer in occasional use vehicles which tend to sit for long periods of time in a low/semi charged state. They seem to have a much better "revival rate". If one is very studious and insures that a charged state was always maintained they're great in occasional use. In my daily drivers I still use Optimas without question as I love the battery.

This is what lead me to purchase the D1200. I loved the charger after testing one, and it brought back one of the batteries I felt was dead. The second I tested boiled. Maybe this particular battery was too far gone, or it's an isolated incident. Only time will tell.

By no means am I trying to beat Optima up over their products or I'm an unhappy customer. It's quite the opposite. It's not every day you get the ear of someone working directly for a company; I'm just trying to determine what the actual cause could be to prevent it from happening in the future.

[OptimaJim]

Rhino, “set and forget” does suggest some input on the user's part. However, our chargers are smart enough that if you simply connect the battery to one of our units and walk away, after a set period of time, it will begin charging on it's own and automatically go into maintenance mode afterwards, even if you don't provide any input as to the type of battery. If your unit exceeded 12.0 amps at any point, I'd really like more information on that and if you could re-create it with a photo, that would be even better.

It is not a theory that some chargers have minimum voltage thresholds, it is fact. The minimum threshold for our chargers is 1.25 volts, although for many chargers, it can be as high as 10.5 volts. It is possible that your battery was so sulfated or had tab corrosion, that the charger determined it couldn't accept a charge, although after repeating that process a few times, enough of a surface charge may have been delivered in the previous testing processes, to allow it to begin charging.

I spend every day online, listening to folks who have questions or concerns about our products, so I totally understand that there is a perception amongst some (which often includes personal experience), that there is some kind of quality-related issue with our products. However, there is rarely, if ever, a connection made between the fact that lots of people are talking about our products (both positively and negatively), because lots of people own them- more than any other AGM brand out there by a significant margin.

AGM batteries are a different technology than traditional flooded batteries and they will react differently in applications. Probably the biggest difference between the two is a result of the extremely low internal resistance of AGM products, which allows them to provide power longer (and discharge more deeply) than flooded batteries. This difference tends to manifest itself quickly in off-road applications, where users are running batteries down with winches and other big-draw accessories and more slowly amongst hot rodders, whose cars slowly discharge batteries as they sit in storage. Either way, this difference can make AGM batteries more challenging to recover with many battery chargers on the market and traditional recovery methods (jump-starting).

I think the industry is working very hard right now to find ways to educate both retailers and consumers about AGM technology, because it is quickly taking OE market share from flooded products, especially in start/stop applications and will be doing the same in the aftermarket as well. We have both an online training program for our retail partners, as well as a program that travels the country, bringing the experience to them. We also created a whole host of YouTube videos, which also explains the technology. Some other brands have simply elected to just void warranties on deeply-discharged batteries. We haven't done that and as a result, we end up with a massive quantity of “bad” optima batteries that are only deeply-discharged and work fine, when properly-recharged.

For every internet story about a “bad” optima battery someone had, we probably have ten batteries at our warranty return center that have nothing wrong with them, some of them probably the same batteries people were complaining about online. We don't re-sell those batteries once we determine they aren't really bad, so they used to go straight to the smelter for recycling. This year, we started sponsoring the Chumpcar World Series and we're sticking those batteries into their race cars (we did over 100 just at Road America). Each time we do, we tell those guys the story of how someone else's “bad” battery came to find a new home in their race car. After running the battery in their race cars for seven hours or more, they seem pretty convinced there's really nothing wrong with them. We hope they tell their friends and help spread the word.

Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, optima batteries, Inc.
www.pinterest.com/optimabatteries

[Rhino]

Again, I feel I should restate that I'm not attempting to state that there is a quality issue with optima products. In general it's more of a comparison of AGM vs standard lead acid. If I did feel optima had poor products I wouldn't be using them in other vehicles and wouldn't have purchased an Optima charger.

I'll see if I can duplicate the results, and snap a picture of it. While I could be remembering incorrectly, I do feel strongly that I saw the display peak to 13 amps. I found it puzzling since the model number indicates a maximum of 12 amps. You did mention earlier that AGM's have a lower internal resistance. It sounds most likely that the low resistance and high sulfation is what lead to this particular issue.

AGM batteries are a different technology than traditional flooded batteries and they will react differently in applications. Probably the biggest difference between the two is a result of the extremely low internal resistance of AGM products, which allows them to provide power longer (and discharge more deeply) than flooded batteries. This difference tends to manifest itself quickly in off-road applications, where users are running batteries down with winches and other big-draw accessories and more slowly amongst hot rodders, whose cars slowly discharge batteries as they sit in storage. Either way, this difference can make AGM batteries more challenging to recover with many battery chargers on the market and traditional recovery methods (jump-starting).

I think the industry is working very hard right now to find ways to educate both retailers and consumers about AGM technology, because it is quickly taking OE market share from flooded products, especially in start/stop applications and will be doing the same in the aftermarket as well. We have both an online training program for our retail partners, as well as a program that travels the country, bringing the experience to them. We also created a whole host of YouTube videos, which also explains the technology. Some other brands have simply elected to just void warranties on deeply-discharged batteries. We haven't done that and as a result, we end up with a massive quantity of “bad” optima batteries that are only deeply-discharged and work fine, when properly-recharged.

The above abreviated quote is getting to the heart of my question, which I feel is sufficiently answered. AGM's allow themselves to become more deeply discharged due to their lower internal resistance. What should be done to properly recharge an AGM battery that's set for a number of months unattended? With the Optima chargers; If it states the battery can not be recharged at what point should that battery be relegated to the scrap heap?
I've not had much success with attempting to jump start these vehicles after a number of months. Assuming one follows a proper jump start procedure is it possible these attempts have caused damage to the battery in a deeply discharged state?

[MK69RSSS]

Buy the optima charger. I love mine! I got 7 cars all with optima's

[OptimaJim]

Rhino, I believe I understand we're you're coming from in this thread and understand you don't feel there is a quality issue with our products. However, if you can get the charger to show anything higher than 12 amps, please do snap a photo of it and send it my way. That definitely shouldn't happen and if it does, we'd probably like to get that charger back and take a closer look at it (we might even offer to swap out the battery as well, so we can see them both together). If it were to charge at that high of a rate, it would likely do so at the very beginning of the charge cycle, when it typically is at it's highest in terms of amperage output.

While low internal resistance is an attribute AGM batteries do not share with their flooded counterparts, sulfation is process universal amongst all lead-acid batteries. While the low internal resistance will allow them to be more deeply-discharged than flooded batteries when connected to a draw, they also have a much lower self-discharge rate than flooded batteries. That allows them to be able to hold voltage far longer than a flooded battery when not connected to a draw.

If a battery does become deeply-discharged over several months and someone doesn't have one of our chargers, the parallel charging method described in this video is the best alternative for recovering deeply-discharged batteries. Given that our chargers will recover batteries discharged down to 1.25 volts, if a battery is so discharged that even our chargers can't recharge them, it is probably time to recycle the battery.

I equate jumper cables to being the electrical equivalent of one of those one-gallon emergency gas cans. They can get you out of a tight spot, but shouldn't be relied upon entirely to remedy your situation. If you've run out of gas on the side of the road and drop a gallon in the tank, your next stop will probably be a gas station. If you've deeply-discharged your battery to the point that it needs a jump-start, you should get the battery fully-recharged with a battery charger as soon as possible. When folks don't take that extra step of fully-recharging their battery and get into a cycle of dead batteries and jump-starts, that's when real damage does happen both to the battery and vehicle charging system.

Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, optima Batteries, Inc.
www.pinterest.com/optimabatteries

[WS6]

Jim,

I have C-tek Multi US 7002 charger. I have it on snowflake mode which they say is for AGM batteries like optima. If I put my head right down towards the battery, I can barely hear some hissing or air escaping out of the vents on the battery. Is this normal? It's not loud at all and the battery isn't even warm. I just wanted to check. The battery was purchased today and I'm using the C-tek unit as a tender/maintainer.

Thanks

[OptimaJim]

Hi Trey,

I checked with one of our engineers who is familiar with those units. He indicated that although he did have an incident where he observed one doing the same thing, he didn't determine if it was the battery or charger. Based on the data acquisition he has on those units, he didn't think they were designed to overcharge our batteries. Given the newness of the battery, he would recommend returning it to your original retailer for another unit. The battery may test fine at the retailer, so our customer service team may need to assist you on replacement, so please PM me your contact information. Once you have the new battery, I would encourage you to charge it again in identical fashion, to make sure the problem doesn't persist.

Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, optima Batteries, Inc.
www.pinterest.com/optimabatteries

[WS6]

Thanks Jim. I've PM'd you my info.