Way2slow, even though you were asked by a moderator not to say anything about our products, I want you (and the moderator) to know that we have no problems with members posting any of their personal experiences with our products or their experiences with other brands. We don't advertise on forums to silence critics, we do it to be an active and engaged member of communities that use our products. When folks have issues with our products, we want to know about them and do what we can to address them.
There are certainly less expensive OE battery options for manufacturers to choose when outfitting vehicles and equipment. Our batteries end up in many of these applications, because they pass rigorous tests that other brands do not. Some of these are related specifically to vibration in an application, cycle life or performance under extreme temperatures. While that often works in theory, the reality is that once our batteries and the equipment they are installed in goes to customers, they are not always used or maintained in the manner designed or intended by the manufacturer. Batteries are often left in deeply-discharged states for extended periods of time and/or overcharged with unregulated chargers or maintained with units that were not designed to recover deeply-discharged batteries.
As an example, we were getting numerous complaints from one customer that our batteries were showing up and failing load tests before they were even installed in equipment. As it turned out, the customer was attempting to load-test batteries equipped with threaded terminals, without using proper terminal adaptors. Threaded posts on batteries (including marine batteries) were never designed or intended to be the point of contact, through which power is transferred. They are only the means by which users can secure their connections through wingnuts or other fasteners to the terminal base, where the real connection to the battery should be made. That simple explanation corrected what was perceived to be a major issue.
As for bulging cases, I wanted to make sure I gave a comprehensive response, so I did contact one of our engineers and asked him what would cause a flat plate battery to bulge in an industrial application (powered pallet jacks). Immediately, he indicated that flat plate batteries will bulge when they are overcharged. When too much current is pumped into a battery and it has nowhere to go, batteries are designed to vent this excess pressure. When the pressure still exceeds the vent port's ability to disperse it, the heat generated by excessive charge rates will cause the batteries themselves to bulge and expand. This is not a good thing, in fact it is quite the opposite.
As he continued to ask about this application and I shared the information you posted, he indicated the Optima batteries were likely deeply-discharged and recharged with a battery charger that was not properly-regulated or designed to charge these batteries. The same charging issue that may have caused the Optimas to fail may also be causing the flat-plate replacements to bulge. He indicated the replacement batteries are physically heavier and as a result are likely to have more reserve capacity, which could result in those batteries not being discharged so deeply. Batteries are consumable items, so each cycle of use moves the battery closer to the end of it's life cycle. Shallower discharge cycles will lead to longer lifespans, so batteries that have more reserve capacity in a deep-discharge application may see longer lifespans. However, the fact that these flat-plate batteries are bulging indicates their useful lifespan is also likely being diminished significantly due to overcharging. Do you recall what types of chargers you were using in this application and what the settings were?
Jim McIlvaine
eCare Manager, OPTIMA Batteries, Inc.
www.pinterest.com/optimabatteries
