We just started our season last month and today was our second race.
We have a half dozen Yellow Tops for our two cars along with some red tops.
The yellows are al less than a month old and two are new last week.
Today we had both cars have a battery go dead part way into the race. They wouldn't read amps and both had 8-9 Volts and said bad cell. The other battery in each pack had 12.5V + -.
Will be turning them back in on Mon. Has anyone had this type of failure with new batteries? Is the problem the Made In Mexico on the lable?
We had a Red Top do this last year but it was older.
Vic Nieves
Electrathonoftampabay.org
-- Edited by Vic556 on Sunday 16th of October 2011 02:02:29 AM
Vic, We currently have about 40 yellow tops in use with about half of those being 2 years old with 30 race days on them. We have only had a handful of batteries fail over the two years we have used yellow tops. Three were left for an extended time very discharged and will not take a charge. Two were taken home and a kid 'quick charged' them at 60 amps and too high of voltage and they got too hot and vented. One other one had a piece of sheet metal arc it in the lab and the student did not catch it until the battery had no voltage reading left. I have heard though that since Optima moved its plant to Mexico several years ago sometimes there will be few pallets of bad batteries that make it past inspection and to market. Mike
We have our batteries on buss bars to charge at a 2 volt rate. This seems to work well at keeping the battery temps down and not stress the batteries. After a race we recharge them at 10A + - for a few hrs then back them down to 2A
Both batteries that went dead tested at 13.05V and had over 1000A after being on the chargers for a couple of days. Both batteries had been on the shelf at the parts companies for about 1 year. They had stickers 11/10 on them.
Our parts houses are taking back our red tops as they crap out, under the 3 year warranty, and replacing them with yellows for the difference in our wholsale price for the yellows. We should have all our reds changed out by the spring.
