rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about why not to buy optimal car
batteries unless you have a time machine and going back into the past when they made
them well original they were designed
and built in the United States and they are very interesting technology, now
technically an Optima battery is a spiral cell absorbed glass mat battery
yeah quite a mouthful, so it's not a regular flooded battery like I have in
my car where the lead plates inside are flooded with electrolyte of the battery
solution ,and it's not a pure gel battery like those batteries of people using
their house burglar alarms that look like small car batteries and they have a
gel inside, they don't have any kind of vents in them so they can be placed at
any angle you're not too worried about the liquid leaking out of them and the
vibration doesn't bother in that much that's why motorcycles often use these
gel batteries, now in the Optima spiral cell battery turns out that that's the
most efficient use of space like these snails have a spiral cell, and when you
combine the spiral efficiency with the use of absorbed glass mat they can be
very efficient batteries, the absorb glass mat ones were first made for
aircraft in the United States so the absorbed glass mat system was great for
military aircraft, now optimal they took that technology they use 99.99% pure lead
which is a much higher quality than most plain old flooded batteries have, so
here's Scotty singing the praises of the technology behind these Optima batteries,
but why am I telling you not to buy them today, well here's why because the
original Optima batteries they were actually excellent batteries, I had
customers who bought them now it wasn't all that many because they are much more
expensive than regular batteries, but to go back to the late 90s and the early
2000s they were making very good batteries that could last a really long
time and have a lot of power, but these batteries were all made in the United
States, in the year 2000 Johnson Controls big
company they bought them out and immediately started to make a factory in
Mexico to produce these batteries, well they told the American workers that they
couldn't supply enough batteries so they're gonna have a factory in Mexico
that was going to sell batteries just to Europe, ha ha ha I like they tell the
truth to their workers, and then in 2009 couple weeks before Thanksgiving they
told all the workers I were stopping the American plant down and were only
gonna be making them in Mexico consequently the US factory was shut in
the year 2009, and more than ironically that's when I discovered that these
batteries, their quality had went down, they were going bad way too fast, so I asked
my other mechanic friends, hey you know what do you think of these Optima
batteries, they said the same thing I said, hey they used to be good but their bad
now and I went to some auto parts stores and they talked to the commercial
managers and they said the same thing they said, you know we sold these and it
used to last for years, but now a year or two later they're all coming back as bad,
now you can believe whoever you want there's lots of people on the internet
that are touting how great these Optima batteries are, but here's a tip take a
look here my shirt says Scotty that's me if you see guys on the internet touting
how great these Optima batteries are and they're wearing shirts that say Optima
on them, realize those are paid spokesmen that are being paid to tell you how
great these batteries are, but the sad fact is when they move to production to
Mexico the quality went downhill, but the prices went up you think, hey it's
cheaper to make them in Mexico they're just doing more profits, they're red top
battery it lists for 237.99 on Amazon not a cheap battery, and a yellow top
they're stronger battery it lists for 279.99 on Amazon
at least of today, you might be watching this in the future who knows maybe it'll
go up to three four hundred dollars apiece, so let's think this one over they
shut down the American Factory, they moved all the production to Mexico, yet
they keep raising their prices of the batteries, hmm can one think perhaps
corporate greed has something to do with this, now if they were to move to Mexico
kept the quality and lowered the price hey I'd be all for buying these things,
but I test stuff out and when I find that a battery costs that kind of
money and you see in a year or two the things are going bad why waste that kind
of money, now I have to say they have a three year free replacement warranty on
these batteries and I've had a few customers lately, hey they've gotten free
batteries but you're paying all this money you expect it to last a lot longer,
autozone their gold batteries they come with a three-year replacement warranty too,
and it cost less than a half of what these Optima batteries costs, and here's
a kicker for you from the optimal website Optima batteries.com, Optima
batteries do not have a lifetime warranty, warranty replacement batteries
do not carry a new warranty, so yeah if your first battery goes bad within three
years they give you a new one, but as they say their warranty batteries do not
have a new warranty on them, so if it goes bad in a year and a half there goes
your money flying out the window, you have to buy another battery seems that
they know they're not all that well-made either, and the replacement one doesn't
come with a free three-year replacement they're covering their own Heinie on that
one, now if you don't listen to scotty and buy one of these optima batteries, realize
they have a little bit different maintenance of regular batteries, this is
a battery tender as a special thing for AGM charging on it ,because if you have
an Optima battery and it gets drained really low, many battery charges won't
charge it, they have special software and stuff inside them, so if it's really low
it thinks the battery's dead and it won't charge it at all, so you have to
have a special charger to charge these things when they get really low, you
can't just put in a regular old cheapy transformer charger, you need one that's
smart that knows how to charge one of these things, and if your battery needs
to be tested, an Optima battery you need special testing equipment, I've got this
midtronics tester cost over nine hundred dollars it can test them, but if you use
a conventional old-fashioned tester it will often say that this Optima battery
is bad, when in fact it actually isn't bad, now that testing is true for all
absorbed glass mat type batteries not just the Optima, many cars these days
come with absorbed glass mat batteries, they're not Optima their different
manufacturer, and those people hey go ahead and buy from them autozone
AGM batteries for people's Mercedes and they work perfectly fine,
but realize if you do have a modern car that comes with an absorbed glass mat battery
you should only replace it with another absorbed glass mat battery, because the
electrical system the charging system of that car it's set up for that, and if you
use a different type of battery I've seen serious problems occur, but
personally I would not replace it with an Optima battery, as far as I'm concerned
they're overpriced and their quality is poor, as the saying goes there's many
fish in the sea, pick the one that you like, just don't pick one because they
spent a lot of money and advertising saying how great their product is, while
they move their factory down to Mexico and lay off other American workers, and
then have the audacity of raising their prices even higher, hey as far as I'm
concerned that's not the American Way, or at least it didn't used to be the
American Way, so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair
videos, remember to ring that Bell