Optima Yellow Top, car struggling to crank in morning

Optima Yellow Top, car struggling to crank in morning

Author
Discussion

Durzel

Original Poster:

12,232 posts

167 months

Sunday 7th December 2014
quotequote all
Hi

I've got an Optima Yellow Top battery in my daily driver Civic Type-R. I don't think it's particularly old, probably less than 2 years.

Recently it's really been struggling to crank the car in the morning, to the point where I don't think it's going to be able to start it.

I used to have a big parasitic drain on the car that was eventually diagnosed and eliminated (an always live alarm module had water ingress, partially damaging the PCB). In the course of experiencing this parasitic drain the car would completely drain a fully charged battery overnight. A couple of times it read around 3.5v. I managed to rescue it more than once using a CTEK charger. This full drain & rescue probably happened about 4 times before I got to the bottom of the problem.

I'm wondering now whether that experience has ultimately damaged the battery to the point where it's now dying, but I've also read that Yellow Tops are inappropriate for main car batteries because they are deep discharge, rather than all rounders (something about CCA)? So I'm also wondering whether I've got fundamentally the wrong battery for this now colder weather.

I should note that it's been fine left standing for a weekend for the 4 or so months after the parasitic drain was fixed, it's only just recently starting doing this.

S0 What

3,358 posts

171 months

Sunday 7th December 2014
quotequote all
I had a similar issue on my old discovery, yellow top not man enough to start the engine but it was before the weather got cold, i swapped it for a twin battery setup and it was OK, come spring the yeallow top went back in and was fine in warmer weather again, come winter it was back to slow cranking and non starting again, this time i put in in me camper perminantly as a leasure battery.

Durzel

Original Poster:

12,232 posts

167 months

Monday 8th December 2014
quotequote all
Thanks. Guess I'll have to get a new battery for at least the winter then.

thatdude

2,654 posts

126 months

Wednesday 10th December 2014
quotequote all
Just to add, incase you are not sure - CCA relates to the cold-cranking "amperage", otherwise can be considered the avaliable power form the battery on a cold start.

The higher the number, in theory the more power it can provide from cold.

Anyway, on cold mornings the temps can be low enough to prevent the battery chemistry from working at the correct rate (as a rule of thumb, a given chemical process halves in rate for every 10 deg.C, this stems from the ahhrenius equation if you really want to get into that sort of thing). So you might have a well used battery and what is avaliable in the cells to perform the chemistry required to provide energy (and therefore power) is not quite sufficient.

My battery (some unipart job) in my honda civic (1.6 SPORT) is being changed for a new item from honda, which should hopefully be a good quality part that will last for many years whatever the temps. I am suffering cold starting issues aswell (slow cranking resulting in longer crank times to start the engine)


Durzel

Original Poster:

12,232 posts

167 months

Wednesday 10th December 2014
quotequote all
Useful info! smile

The Optima I have has a CCA of 460, but only a total amperage of 38 Ah. I've bought a Yuasa YBX5053/HSB053 which has a CCA of 430, but a capacity of 48 Ah.

No idea if it'll improve things given that the CCA is lower, but at least I'll have a spare if it won't start in the morning.

eletech

1 posts

111 months

Wednesday 17th December 2014
quotequote all
I used a red top under the hood and a yellow top in the back. Always worked good for me. Yellow top will take charge quicker and drain quicker helping my sound system out. Hope this helps. Both batteries lasted like 6-7 years.

Durzel

Original Poster:

12,232 posts

167 months

Monday 5th January 2015
quotequote all
For what it's worth, I ended up buying one of these (cheaper elsewhere mind) and it fixed my problems. Car was left for about 4 days over Christmas and started first time without any difference in cranking.

Now to see if I can recover (desulphate?) this Yellow Top with my CTEK...