TheDieselStop.Com Forums: Optima - Red or Yellow Top????

I'm not sure I agree with them on the yellow top. Unless you are going to run your stereo without the truck running or have other accessories that will be run withoutthe engine (such as a winch) and discharge your batteries down to 60% then the red top is fine. Just for starting and normal "engine on" accessories I think the red top with more cold crank amps is probably better for starting the big powerstroke. It takes a lot of current to turn the big engine especially when it is cold and the oil is thick. Thats why there are two "big batteries" in it. For accessories that are going to be run with the engine running the better solution is to have the dual alternator option and the idle control box that will throttle the engine while monitoring the battery status (called charge protect mode). That said I do have a yellow top in my work jeep but I run a whole bunch of computers and radio test equipment and often leave equipment on without the engine running. I got the yellow top so that it would handle the deeper discharges without damage to the battery. A normal battery in our jeeps gets run down often and results in a very short lifespan. I have a camper on my powerstroke but do not run camper accessories from the powerstroke batteries for that reason. I use big deep discharge gell batteries (similar to the yellow top) that are charged from two solar panels on the top of the camper for that type of "discharge service". I also believe that deep discharge batteries are less tolerant to constant charging. For that reason I built my own temperature compensated regulator for safely maintaining the charge on the camper batteries. Vehicle charging systems are notorious for overcharging batteries. Proper charge rate and terminal voltage is very temperature dependent. Mostly vehicle charging systems charge the hell out of the batteries to compensate for the increased voltage per cell that is required to get the current flow into a cold battery due to cold weather. I think failure to compensate for the charge voltage and rate in hot weather does a lot to reduce the life of car batteries.

In my personal jeep I will put in a yellow top only if I get an electric winch. If I do the a hydraulic winch then I'll buy a red top. When I need to do batteries in the Powerstroke I'll probably do the red. Hope this helps.

-Dave