Do you have a pic of original AMC battery?
Juha, I don't know, but the Optima Red Top gives the car just that little extra American edge (and it is the one of the best of course).
Quote from: Jurjen on July 31, 2011, 04:37:05 PM
Juha, I don't know, but the Optima Red Top gives the car just that little extra American edge (and it is the one of the best of course).
Optima actually ran into problems the last few or so years. I went through three under warranty on my car. Before that, almost every car I had used one without issue. I ended up just going a HD Energizer battery, and it's fine.
I've got a bunch of friends who run them in their race car's, and I guess lately they've been back to doing OK, but still not worth the money.
A lot of our local performance shops actually dropped them just because of the number of warranty/return issues.
Costco use to sell them as well and discontinued them around here for the same reason.
Their warranty also changed. One of the shops here was telling me that Optima did not want to warranty any batteries put into performance vehicles, and to label it as "abusive usage" to void the warranty. The owner didn't like that, so he stopped carrying them. Same thing if you have an aftermarket audio system, or even a winch. Anything considered "non stock current draw" can be used to void the warranty.
They were one of the best batteries you could buy, but they were purchased by another company who changed their internals. From what I remember, they also moved production to Mexico. They are very expensive in comparison to what else is out there these days, and they've switched from a pure lead base to a lead/tin mix.
Unless you have a lot of extra money to blow, I personally wouldn't buy one, just from my experience with them not lasting over a year.
Maybe Europe's supplier is different than here though?
AMC used "clear power" batteries until the mid '70's. These were the ones that you could see the fluid level from the side. I don't remember what AMC used after that.
Source: 1980 AMC Accessory Catalog
(http://home.comcast.net/~eaglewagon/batteries.jpg)
That sure looks like them
I know there is companys who make older style covers to put over new batteries. Since they probably don't make them for AMC's, I don't think it would be too hard to paint a battery white, and red/blue/green with an AMC sticker, but it will void your batteries warranty.
I would totally give that a try if I had an AMC!