By ARog on Tuesday, July 10, 2001 - 06:15 pm: Edit

Yes, I've searched old threads, but the truth is, they weren't that helpful. I know it's hard to get a straight up concensus on this board, but here's what I got...A friend of mine is selling his truck, piecing it out, he ended up giving me a barely used (2 months) yellow top optima. The question is, can I use this in my truck for starting purposes, and occassional use of 2 hella 3000's? A winch is a year or two off, but I've got the battery now. Thanks for the help.

By Milan on Tuesday, July 10, 2001 - 06:47 pm: Edit

No you can't. We all know this battery cannot be used for starting. I'll take it off your hands if you pay the shipping (hint, hint).

By Ho Chung (Ho) on Tuesday, July 10, 2001 - 07:53 pm: Edit

milan, nice try.

yes, you can use the yellow top for starting, for winching, for lights, for stereo, for fridges, for anything you like.

it'll take a good beating.

By Discosaurus on Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - 06:07 am: Edit

Yes - I've been running a yellow top for years.

I used to worry that it wouldn't last since I
seldom drag it down in voltage but that hasn't
been the case.

It MIGHT be a good idea to exercise it once in a
while but you would have to check with a battery
expert to know for sure.

keith
discosaurus

By Nathan Hindman (Nathanh) on Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - 09:08 am: Edit

Has anyone had any experience with a Yellow top and leaving an ARB fridge on all night (ie while camping)? If so, did the fridge drain the battery completely or did the truck start right up?

Nathan Hindman

By Discosaurus on Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - 11:55 am: Edit

I've run my Coleman fridge all night with no
problem. It probably doesn't pull as many amps
as a ARB, tho...

How many amps is the ARB supposed to draw when
cooling ?? We can be tech heads and figure it
out !

A D750S yellow top has a capacity of 52 Amp Hours
at a draw of 2A. That means it'll run for 26
hours at 2A draw before reverting to a discharged
condition. The trouble is, I don't know off hand
what the voltage is for a "discharged" lead-acid
battery and if that voltage will start your truck.

keith
discosaurus

By Nathan Hindman (Nathanh) on Wednesday, July 11, 2001 - 12:30 pm: Edit

I don't know exactly how many amps an ARB fridge pulls, but I do know that running the fridge and a 400 Watt invertor was enough to pop a 30 amp fuse the other day. Considering that both the invertor and the ARB are able to individually run off a cig lighter plug with a 25 amp fuse, I'd put the power of the fridge at somewhere in the neighborhood of 20A.

Going by the 52 Amp Hours of a yellow top it would give just over 2 hours of power, but I'd be very suprised if the fridge could drain the battery completely in that short of a time.

Nathan Hindman

By Discosaurus on Thursday, July 12, 2001 - 08:25 am: Edit

I checked ARB's web site. They say the fridge
only draws 3.5A max. Since it won't run all the
time once the food gets cold - say 50% duty
cycle (although it's going to be less then that),
we'll say 1.75A/hrs of current draw. That's
21A/hrs for a 12 hour night. The 52A/hr Optima
should run that thing all night just fine.

Inverters are notorious (sp??) for blowing fuses,
even when they have no load on them.

keith
discosaurus

By Simon on Thursday, July 12, 2001 - 10:26 am: Edit

we drove a range rover for 2 hours with no alternator to home safe home then next morning we drove it to the shop about 30 minutes away ..

Optimas are the shit!

Simon.

By Joshua Bova (Jbova) on Friday, July 13, 2001 - 03:18 am: Edit

I recently had a discussion with my local Optima distributor, concerning a special order of a pair of red tops, and was informed that Optima was discontinuing the red top line as they have had a lot of problems with them. Don't shoot the messenger if this information is invalid, jut quoting what I heard.

The point is, that this place sells a lot of optima, they specialize in high wattage stereo equipment, and they only sell yellow tops, so there are a lot of pimped out corrolas with 10 million watt stereos starting their engines with yellow tops.

By Ron on Friday, July 13, 2001 - 03:19 am: Edit

Big stereos would definately kill red tops.

Ron