Looking at replacing my batteries soon. I live in Southwestern Oklahoma so the winter is not too cold. I just want to buy some decent batteries. My truck idles quite a bit on construction sites - I have a high idle setting on my chip to help keep the A/C cool and the batteries from being drained to badly. Any recommendations?

 

i usually buy diehard gold series for my gasser. haven't needed to replace the diesel batts yet. i only buy the diehards if they are made by johnson controls (the company who gave diehard a good rep). for a while some diehards were made by exide and ac delco. they were crap. I worked for sears during that time, and saw many of the new batteries i installed come back dead within a year. however i remember that at one point a tech pulled out an old "johnson" battery that finally died ater 11 years. I have not had that kind of luck, but even in my gasser I abuse the battery and the diehard has performed well, and the gold series has a good warranty. I've considered optima's for the eventual replacement, and remember seeing some discussion on which style optima was the best for our trucks, but i've slept since then. when i worked for sears i was told most batteries seem to last 1-3 years in the area (DFW, where I was working). so if that holds true, just make sure you get a batery with close to a 3 year free replacement warranty and prorated after that, and it should help in the long run on the pocket book. that's the logic i used, and i recently replaced the diehard gold in the gasser after 3 1/2 years of pretty good abuse. i paid a little, but a lot less than full replacement cost. course the longest lasting battery in any car i've seen. the stock motorcraft batteries. not glamorous, but lasted 4+ years in my gasser. food for thought
Chad

 

believe it or not the batteries that wal-mart offers are pretty good and come with 3yr replacement, (wich I took advantage of on a 07/03 batt. that went bad I went on july 31st and got it replaced no ? asked when tested bad), they were only like $65 or something) Not a bad deal!!!!!

 

yeah the batts that came in my diesel are wally world brand now that i think about it, and one is stamped as being produced by johnson controls. might be worth a shot, but I didn't buy these, and haven't before so i can't vouch for a reputation on wally world batteries. even though they are same manufacturer, they may have lower specs to meet. never know. course someone will pipe in with more info, i'll stop rambling now.
Chad

 

My battery are about toasted. Im either going with Optimas or with Motorcraft. On my 97 f-150 it went until 7 years on the stock battery.

 

Which spec optimas are you considering? I have heard good things about them also.

 

Just checked out the local wally world. Wow, those prices are hard to beat. Plus the 3 year warranty.

 

Got 3 years from my OEM's and when they went they went with no warning. Replaced with the O'Reileys Super Start Extremes for $69 each. I have only had them for 6 months so I cant tell you how long they will last. I have one in my Explorer and Ranger and have about 5 years on each of them and they still start those good.

 

If you go with optimas, you want the red top, the yellow will work as well, but the reds are really designed for what they are going to see. I replaced mine two years ago with batteries from les schwab, around 70 a battery, 3 yr replacement and 72 month prorated. So far they have performed as should.

 

So far every option sounds better than when I stopped at the local Interstate Battery store, they wanted about $105 for each of them. Thanks everyone!

 

i just replaced mine with Duralast gold from autozone. they are made by Johnson (same as the diehard) and have a 3 year replacement warr. and an 8 year prorated warr. they also have a higher CCA rating than the stock ones, $79.99 each

 

Anyone have experience on how long the optima red tops will last?

 

I recently replaced the batteries in my '99 7.3L with Wally World batteries and they are working great. Down here near Houston batteries have a hard time and I haven't experienced any problems yet. I think it was $144 for both. When it's time for batteries for our '02 7.3 we will make another trip to Wally World.

 

I was looking under my hood at the batterys it has. It has one Interstate and one ford OEM. The OEM only has 750 CCA while the Interstate has a 1100cca. Would anything bad happen if i was to replace them with 2 1100cca bats?

 

no, the truck will draw what it needs. more cca's or ca's just means the battery has more in reserve if you need it. most people usually shop for batteries with large cca numbers. just means you won't work the batteries as hard. since the batteries are in parrallell having different rating's isn't that bad either, as long as they are the same voltage, which 99.999% of car batteries are. however for good form and preventative measre, matching batteries would be best.
btw, diehard gold for my 6-banger mustang with 3yr-100month prorate was right at $100. interstate is a good battery with lots of dealers, but a little pricey for my taste. i prefer a battery bought at a national chain that can be warrantied just about anywhere. one of the reasons i shop sears instead of walmart, walmart isn't in all 50 states. plus i worked at sears and have confidence in their proceedures.
Chad