Yellow Top owns Kinetic HC1800

[audiolife 5,000+ posts]

My kinetik has lasted 6 years longer than any optima I have owned and its used as a starter battery. If you do not keep a lead acid battery charged it will go bad. When these type of batteries discharge they sulfate and the longer you go without recharging the battery the MORE that sulfation becomes an insulator to the point the battery becomes harder and harder to recharge to the point that it becomes ruined. When in a sulfated state the battery becomes harder to recharge, you HAVE TO change the way it gets recharged to break up what is becoming an insulator and you should NOT allow your alternator to attempt to recharge a dead battery much less a sulfated battery. You would either ruin the alternator and battery or be extremely hard on them both as an alternator IS not a battery charger as much as it is a bulk maintainer that works on a VERY VERY simple basis. An alternator sees a load puts power to that load until load changes it does not monitor the SoC of the battery any other way. When the battery presents a load to the alternator and accepts very little of the charge going to the battery and it will make the alternator hot and the battery hot.

Back when I used optima I would be the first to admit I didn't care for them all that well but I was told that they were better and would last longer than what was in the vehicles at the time and they clearly did not last nearly as long as what was in the vehicles to start with under the same conditions. They needed better chargers and more care in how far you discharged them, I was also pushed to buy red tops when I really needed yellow.... I have had a few tussles with used yellow tops in my days