Thread: Exide Orbital Battery

Paul I think you`ll be impressed with em, I`ve had a 900(Black top) for the best part of 5 years now with no problems and a 900DC (Blue top) for over 12 months and cant fault em.

I was initially worried about running a new and old one as sometimes the new one can suffer, but so far so good, and the engel supplies cold beer for a few days. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif[/img]

Seeing that they are Optima technology under licence they should be OK.
AND they should be cheaper.
I am a little disappointed with my Optima yellow top as the 55 amp hours only runs the fridge for 28 hours.
Mine is now 5 1/2 years old and is leaking out of the neg teminal . So much for 3 times the life. I usually get 3-4 years out of a battery.
I am thinking of a Federal Gel battery (who own Optima anyway). The Federal battery the same size has 78 amp hours and 505 CCA so can drive a winch.
The guy at Ryde Batteries who are the agents reckons the Federal does not like high underbonnet temps as much as the Optima but otherwise OK. I think a Rangie is OK for underbonnet temps compared to many other cars.
Does any one have experience for or against.
Regards Philip A

Cheers Paul - good to know.

So which ones did you buy - the Exide blue top?

LRH

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'>So which ones did you buy - the Exide blue top? [/b][/quote]

LRH

Yep, 2 blue tops. $450 for the pair, only $70 more than 1 Optima Yellow Top. Makes the Optimas seem pretty dear for what is basically the same thing?



Col

Are the ones you have labelled Orbital or Maxxima? If Maxxima, are they they same as the Orbitals in the link I posted?



Paul [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

Originally posted by PhilipA
Seeing that they are Optima technology under licence they should be OK.
AND they should be cheaper.
I am a little disappointed with my Optima yellow top as the 55 amp hours only runs the fridge for 28 hours.
Mine is now 5 1/2 years old and is leaking out of the neg teminal . So much for 3 times the life. I usually get 3-4 years out of a battery.

Sounds ok to me. I've just bought an Optima Blue top to replace my battery. I only get 2yrs from a battery, my uncle gets about 1yr with Ag duties.

Hi Slunnie, any idea as to what do you do to cause such a short life span and what do you mean by Ag duties.

The reason I ask is that at this time I’m doing test on some new equipment and I’m trying get as many ideas of how batteries and my gear are going to be used and hopefully work out ways to get the new gear to give some improvement to hard usage situations.

So if you can give me some ideas of your usage, I’ll add this to the testing I’m doing and see if there can be some genuine improvements made to increase battery capacity and operating life.

An feed back would be appreciated.

Cheers

Gday Drivesafe,

No worries.

In my use, I have a TD5 Disco that gets used for short trips generally (as I live at work) that may have a few days between runs. For 1 or 2 weekends a month it gets hammered in the bush. The 4WD has a winch also which I think is hard on the battery. The battery type is the manganese something or others that the factory fit.

For my uncle, its the battery that is in his Landcruiser on his farm. I'm not sure if its the rough ride or also due to the nature of his very short runs, stop start etc.

Hi Slunnie, as far as your uncle’s battery goes, it sounds like Taxi syndrome, just started to death. ops:

I’m still thinking about your use and I’ll get back to you.

Cheers and thanks.