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Battery reviews

I have never seen the 6v thing before. I have seen drop to 10/11 volt but never 6 on agm.

I have seen plates short out in regular wet lead acid battery do 6v. Maybe An agm could short out lead somehow. But two at the same time?

When agm battery is really low, i know adding in a lead acid along with the battery charger with it will help bring the charge up easier. Basically act like the truck uses 3 batteries instead of 2. Then hook up the charger and let it go.

But by all means if they wanna swap them for new ones- do it.
Definitely do a parasitic draw test. Most are found with a dead battery out of the blue.

The wife’s fj had the battery bite it this last week. 5 year old wet battery. Dead on Tuesday, charged and Thursday was dead again. Ordered in the Odyssey for it, installed Saturday.
 
My AGM batteries were fine. Then they were not. Binary. Either worked or it didn't. Not like the slow drain from lead acid. They fell right off the cliff. I tried charging with smart charger. No good. Snowflake as they suggested, no good. Regular type charge. No good. I couldn't save them. I had Odessey batteries.
 
My AGM batteries were fine. Then they were not. Binary. Either worked or it didn't. Not like the slow drain from lead acid. They fell right off the cliff. I tried charging with smart charger. No good. Snowflake as they suggested, no good. Regular type charge. No good. I couldn't save them. I had Odessey batteries.
That was how the Delco batteries in the 2008 Malibu and also the two Delco batteries in My truck went.
One day the truck cranked a little slow but started, I thought HHHMMmmm, went to the post office, it barely started. Got home and shut off the engine, tried to start and nothing. They both fell off that fast. In tje process of Me trying to start the engine with the batteries being low, the low voltage wiled out the PMD.
Wifes Malibu went about the same way. There was no charging it enough to get it to last for one more trip to Billings.
I replaced all three with Delco batteries.
 
Well it's been 1 yr on the new battery's, while what few times I have used the truck it had always fired right up, battery's were always hot..

Now it's been siting 3 months now and I went to crank it today and battery's were flat dead, and nothing was left on. I have a good digital charger so I hooked it up and let it charge for a few hours, the charger will let you know what % charged and the voltage in the batteries and will maintain when fully charged.

After a few hours I noticed the maintain light was on, checked and the volt was 6 .... WTF...

I disconnected the cables and tried each again thinking something may be shorted, well the same thing, fancy charger said they were fully charged and showed 6v...

Thinking my charger was bad I tried another charger, same thing would not charge past 6v...

Anyone know what is going on ???

Battery plus is going to check them and replace if needed but I can't see 2 batteries doing this at the same time...

What gives ???????

ECM and radio memory could have drained them in 3 months. Brake light switch intermittent coming on as well as horn or dome lights intermittent due to hot/cold temp swings. Overdischarge and not charged = sulfated to death and kills any lead acid battery. One battery going bad will take the other one out in via overdischarged and sulfate to death.

At 6V you have 3 shorted cells. Quit Messing With Them!!! Use the warranty. Batteries can be dangerous and explode. Ones with known problems even more likely: Not. Good. Odds.

Here is just one shorted cell and attempting to recover it: dangerous to even make this video with all the vents hissing! (Note the light from the door open as I flipped the outside breaker vs. unplug ANYTHING in the garage.)

 
Mine did the one day good next day flat dead trick last summer. Had the wife run me to AAP for some new ones, I turned in two old junkers I had laying around the house rather than pulling the ones in my truck that day. later I gave a close look at the ones I pulled from the truck and found where something had rubbed a hole in the case on the passenger side batt. I fooled around with it and sealed the hole, popped off the caps and filled it with some distilled water, tried to charge them and they came right back up!. lol now I have a spare for projects and such :)

all of our rigs will slowly drain a battery in about 1 to 2 months just by the PCM and radio memory. depending on the amount of drain, you might benefit by installing a solar battery maintainer somewhere on the rig just to outweigh the draw on them over time.
 
I've seen a lot of Deka batteries in equipment we get new here at work. don't know the brand very well but from what I have heard on batteries. there are only a couple of "manufactures" that actually make the batteries. they sell to several companies who just put their stickers and labels on them calling them their brand x batteries. iirc Exide is one and Interstate is another, but I could be wrong there
 
I've nothing to add on Deka, but I did find that the Odyssey AGM battery I have in my ATV was purchased in 2013. I've had a smart charger on it from time to time, but not since last winter. Unless the machine has been sitting a very long time, I just about don't even hear the starter since it hits so hard when firing up, even at this age. I compare this to replacing every two years previously and it has more than paid for itself. With no pull start on ATV, there isn't a way to avoid using a battery.
 
East Penn makes Deka. They also make Napa, Autozone, Intimidator, Aux, MK, Duracell (auto), Rayovac (auto), Harley Davidson.

So with the reputation many of those have-
I would pay maybe 40% more than a lead acid but certainly not double- which is what most quality AGM batteries will cost. My 2 pennies
 
I've seen a lot of Deka batteries in equipment we get new here at work. don't know the brand very well but from what I have heard on batteries. there are only a couple of "manufactures" that actually make the batteries. they sell to several companies who just put their stickers and labels on them calling them their brand x batteries. iirc Exide is one and Interstate is another, but I could be wrong there
I installed powdered lead conveyor at Exide many decades ago.

I was surprised at the various labels that went on one run of batteries.

There was even different lengths of warranty in the same run. They just charged more for the sticker with the bigger number on it/longer warranty.
Then there were other batteries on different runs that were in an fact lower quality.
 
Old thread but any thoughts on the Deka AGM batteries ?

They can't take the heat, period. Get Out Of My Kitchen!!! Short miserable 3 month life and refunded for something else...

Consumer Reports even fried em on their gentle tests.

Deka relabel for local parts store. Installed 7/2014 and sudden low crank speed meaning ole Patch had killed a battery around 10/2014. Load test one battery suddenly drops off during test. Yeah load test on that one be clearly an explosion hazard even I pooped my shorts over.

The case swelling is impressive.

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I installed powdered lead conveyor at Exide many decades ago.

I was surprised at the various labels that went on one run of batteries.

There was even different lengths of warranty in the same run. They just charged more for the sticker with the bigger number on it/longer warranty.
Then there were other batteries on different runs that were in an fact lower quality.
Reminds me of when a good friend of mine was working at the Goodyear (now known as Veyance Tech, since Goodyear divested their hose and belt production and sold it to some Union-busting venture capialist assholes about a decade or so ago) hose and belt plant here in Lincoln back in the early 1980's.

I was there doing some construction work for the company I worked for that summer while school was out, digging new trenches under the concrete floor to run new steam lines for the new "pots" they were installing that vulcanize and "cure" the hoses. How that worked was there was a mold that had 36 forms on it that resembled and was called a "tree". Straight lengths of hose were slid onto the curved hose forms on the tree, the door on the pot closed and sealed and high pressure, high temperature steam ran through the pot for a set period of time. Then, while still hot and pliable, before the now vulanized rubber cools and takes its shape permanently, the operator had less that two minutes to slide the still very hot hoses off of the forms on the tree. Too slow and the hoses would take their permanent set and be stuck on their forms - necessitating cutting them off and rendering them unuseable.

It was hot, sweaty work, but paid damn good with great benefits. Hose Pullers had a quota each had to make of useable hoses per shift (Union negotiated contract) that an average worker could attain. If you were quick, efficient and had learned your job well, a good Puller could make their quota a couple of hours after lunch break and then spend the next 1½-2 hours just kicking back cleaning their area, staging empty wheeled bins for the next shift to put their finished hoses in, shooting the breeze with your fellow workers, etc.

After working 3rd Shift for a couple of years pulling hoses, my friend had enough seniority to bid on, and get, a Day Shift job as a Labeler. Those were the people who printed the manufacturer's logo and part number on the hose or belts. For hoses, there was a jig that properly oriented the hose so that it was printed in the exact same place on every hose. There is a "cartridge" that has a silkscreen of the logo and part number, a roller and a reservoir to keep the roller that runs across the silkscreen primed.

So, I was on lunch break from the construction job cutting the concrete floors and trenching for the new steam lines back in the Hose Department and decided to wander over and see what was up with my friend. He was printing FOMOCO logos and part numbers on the hoses in light blue from a half-filled bin next to him and then putting the labeled ones into another bin on the other side of his station. He got a few more done while I was there, glanced at the cycle counter on the machine and told me to watch what he did next.

He rolled away the partially filled bin of Ford hoses, popped that cartridge out of the stenciling machine, cleaned off the machine, looked at the clipboard hanging next to him, went over to a shelf and pulled off a new cartridge, loaded it into his stenciling machine, rolled up a new empty "finished" bin by his work station, reached into the same bin of blank hoses he had been using to make Ford replacement hoses and began stenciling those hoses. The first few he tossed into a reject barrel because until completely primed, the stencil doesn't fully print. I noticed that these were printed in a gold color. He told me to take a look at one, so I pulled it out and it had a partial NAPA logo and PN on it! He told me that his entire shift the day before he was printing Goodyear logos and PNs his entire shift on those exact same hoses from that run and they'd switched over from Goodyear to Ford sometime during 2nd Shift the night before.

Point being, you may pay way different prices for the exact same item made by the exact same manufacturer to the exact same quality standards - depending only on the brand name put on it for its final retail price.
 
Neighbor across the street, He runs some heavy duty vehicles. His main pulling rig id a Dodge diesel one ton SRW.
Whenever He needs a battery, He hits the Caterpillar store and buys those cat batteries. He gets like 14 years service from them.
Just passing along what He told Me yesterday.
 
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