The NorthStar AGM Battery + Voltage Booster Upgrade

Didn't realize I needed this. Following!

 

Question: which of the two blade fuses in the HKB site is everyone getting to support this Northstar battery? I see two options but I may be missing some easy detail that helps me select the one I need.

Probably going to go full send and get a 27F

 

I have ordered one last week from the HKB site, got notification it shipped like 2 days later so now I wait for it to arrive.

 

The micro blade. Note that prices are shown in ASD and on the home page is says they are closed till 12/27, so orders don't ship till after that.
https://www.hkbelect.com/product/182-mk2-micro-blade-75a-electronic-fuse-version-2015/

 

Made the diode fuse mod with one diode and never looked back my BM2 reports healthy voltages. And my battery gets a good charge. It is a simple mod so don't hesitate. Works good

 

I noticed recently that Northstar automotive batteries are no longer listed on their website. They are listed on the Odyssey website but still branded as Northstar. Wonder if there was a buy out at some point

 

Odyssey's parent company, EnerSys, bought NorthStar a little over a year ago...

Competitor buys NorthStar Battery, 2 Springfield plants

 

Interesting, hopefully quality doesn't take a hit.

Edit: am I thinking of Optima..? I always get those 2 mixed up

 

I agree with the sentiment but, yes, the one with quality issues is Optima. Odyssey and Northstar remain solid choices.

 

I just noticed that. I'm going to go the DIY route with a diode and save a but load of money since Im about to drop $300 on a battery and $65 for a new battery hold down.

 

Hey everyone, I'm doing some preliminary research for replacing/upgrading my battery to a 24F x2 battery for my 3rd gen whenever the OEM one goes out. I read through quite a bit of this thread and don't recall seeing a conclusive answer to correcting this on a 3rd gen. I saw that it's being controlled from the ECU rather than the fuse box as OP Crash posted.

Is there any hope for us 3rd gen guys who can do mild electrical work or should I just find the best lead acid battery and call it a day? I've seen quite a few posts from 3rd gen guys running these batteries and giving anecdotal accounts that it's fine just to drop these in, but there seems to be some folks in here that know what their doing. So, I'd just like an honest answer for someone who doesn't want to do a ton of work or spend more than $150 for the fix.

Thanks

 

In 3rd Gen the battery charge voltage is ECU controlled. OVTune has a ECU tune to bump the charge voltage +0.5v just like the mechanical method covered in the original post. I should link that back in the thread. Alternatively you could put the battery on a wall charger periodically to prevent sulfating. If you do nothing the battery will still work, it just won't be at full charge and the battery life will be reduced.

 

I would be hesitant to modify the truck's ECU before it was paid off. I supposed this means that I wont be going AGM after all. I have a wall charger, but for me a big pro of the AGM was that it doesn't need to be maintained.

Thanks again, Crash.

 

If I had the room to garage my vehicles I would have no problem hooking up the wall charger. I’d likely prefer that to the OZ voltage booster.

 

In addition to the excellent summary of battery options presented by @crashnburn80, I would like to bring an additional seemingly less-known battery option to the attention of TW readers: the FullThrottle 27F AGM battery (from FullRiver).

Disclaimer: I have no association with the manufacturers, distributors, or marketers for the battery(ies) discussed here. I in fact am very happy with the Northstar 27 battery in my truck and can wholeheartedly recommend it. Also, sorry if this battery option has already been posted, I'm not going to read 38 pages of this thread to see if it showed up. But I couldn't find it by search.

Anyway, I stumbled across these FullRiver/FullThrottle AGM batteries while researching battery options for my commuter car, whose Bosch conventional (flooded) lead acid battery just shit the bed only a few months beyond its 36-month “free replacement” warranty window expired. And despite its "96 month prorated warranty," it'll cost me $120 to replace it (including the prorated discount!) The now-dead one only cost me $100 in the first place -- what a racket!

So I am strongly considering this FullThrottle AGM. SoCal heat just kills conventional batteries, I've never gotten more than 4 years from a car battery out here. (Also, Northstar doesn’t make one in a compatible size for this car.)

Here’s the downside: this battery is made in Communist China. But you can buy them from mainstream US vendors that will stand by their warranty (such as the huge online one that sends you collectible magnets with each order). And the technical specs provided for these batteries are nothing short of amazing. Just look at this spec sheet for the 27F:



On top of that, they offer a detailed manual for operation and maintenance of their AGM batteries. I mean, look at this, it’s 18 pages of shockingly useful technical information:



(note this is just a screenshot, you can download the PDF from their site.)

I can’t find anywhere near this level of technical detail from any other manufacturer. Honestly I would buy from this company vs. NorthStar or Optima simply because they offer a proper spec sheet for their product, instead of a bullshit promotional flyer made by a graphic designer or something. I'm an engineer and I value information a lot, especially compared to useless promotional bullshit. Let's compare this to the data available online for the NorthStar 27F:



Notice how there are only a handful of specs, and zero graphs. But wait, what's this on page two? A notional diagram of a car, showing things that might be in a car, and approximately where they might be? How the fuck does that help me decide what charge voltage to use on this battery?!? Get your fucking act together, NorthStar!


Enough ranting. The FullThrottle 27F has very competitive specs vs. the NorthStar and the Optima, and as of this writing, it costs a fair amount less. OP, your insightful comparison helped me pick my NorthStar 27F last year. To help future readers consider their options, please consider including this poorly updated chart that I made in MS paint (or otherwise including this data) in your first post:

 

Interesting. You've given me something else to research/consider for my vehicles for which Northstar doesn't make a suitable battery. My primary concern here is FullThrottle's Chinese origin. They do provide more thorough data sheets than Northstar, but the country of origin makes me wonder how reliable the data is. Moreover, the longest lasting thing of Chinese origin I can recall is COVID. I don't think much of Optima, whose quality dropped dramatically when production was off-shored (to Mexico, IIRC). Besides Northstar, Odyssey is known for making good battieris and I've personally had positive experiences with Interstate.

 

Very interesting find, I've never heard of this manufacture but from the looks of it they are newer to importing to the US. And talk about fantastic specs charts/data sheets! I wish all products would include such extensive technical documentation. Agreed that Northstar has a lot of room for improvement by comparison in their provided documentation, those Full Throttle docs are amazing. I have been able to call NorthStar and speak directly to a technically knowledgeable person on the phone to get whatever technical information I need as well as discuss battery design, certainly not the same, but their customer service was impressive.

While the Full Throttle battery has some good specs, a few things stand out to me. Arguably the two most important specs people look at when comparing AGMs is CCA and RC. How much cold cranking power does the battery have, and what is the power reserve capacity. By the Full Throttle specs their battery comes in at 3.7% higher in Cold Cranking Amps than the NorthStar 27F. It is higher but relatively speaking negligible. Many people run AGMs for the Reserve Capacity, whether that be for accessories/lighting when camping, or the extra power reserve depth for high draw applications like winching. In RC the Northstar comes in at 37.3% higher in power reserve capacity than Full Throttle. While the CCA is difference is trivial, the RC difference is huge and in NorthStar's favor by a landslide.

I don't buy or recommend products for warranties. People that post that you can buy some low quality battery with a great warranty and that makes it a good deal do not align with my philosophy on automotive components. A single failure that leaves you stranded, hopefully not in the remote wilderness, is not worth whatever costs savings may be repaid by a free replacement battery that will likely repeat the same event. Optima's batteries look ok on paper, certainly better than stock. But what you don't see in the specs is product build quality. As soon as Optima moved production to Mexico to reduce costs, quality tanked and product reliability fell off a cliff. The specs still look the same, but the product is not reliable in the way it used to be and that isn't visible on paper. NorthStar on the other hand has set the bar in battery quality and reliability, manufacturing their batteries in the US. Similarly, while the China made Full Throttle battery might have some good looking specs, that doesn't mean it has the same level of build quality and reliability as NorthStar. While there is nothing fundamentally wrong from a manufacturing standpoint with manufacturing in China, I've lost count of how many Chinese manufactured products I've tested that have failed to meet their specs and/or had falsely inflated specs.

Then there is price. The China made Full Throttle 27F appears to

$477 Full Throttle FT965-27 (Group 27)

cost $385 from most retailers. The USA made NorthStar 27F cost $360 under the X2 Power label, before rebates and/or the 10% online purchase discount. So the world class USA battery manufacture with significantly better power reserve is also cheaper than the China made counterpart.

NorthStar also manufactures battery backup systems for enterprise environments, so it is always interesting to see who trusts their critical backup systems to a manufacture:

GENERAL CONTRACTORS
AECOM
Balfour Beatty
BNBuilders
Bovis Lend Lease
Clark Construction
DPR Construction
Gilbane Building Co.
Hensel Phelps
McCarthy Building
NOVO Construction
KBR
PCL Construction
Shaw
Skanska
Swinerton
TRC
Turner Construction
Tutor Perini
Webcor Builders
Whiting-Turner

HEALTHCARE & PHARMA
AbbVie
CHC
Cedars Sinai
Children’s Hospital
Hoffman
Kaiser
Pfizer
Merck
Mass General
St. Jude
UCLA
UCSD
U of Oklahoma
Yale New Haven

HOTEL & CASINO
Felcor
HCA
Hilton
Host
Hyatt
Marriott
Sheraton
Starwood
Ritz Carlton
W Hotels

EDUCATION
Harvard
NYU
Stanford
UC Berkeley
UCLA
USC
Yale

GOVERNMENT
Air Force
Army Corps of Engineers
Coast Guard
Customs and Border Protection
Department of Energy
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Veterans Affairs
Federal Aviation Administration
Food & Drug Administration
National Park Service
National Nuclear Security Admin.
Naval Facilities Engineering Command
NASA
US Postal Service
Washington Headquarters Services

COMMERCIAL
AIG
AT&T
CBRE
Comcast
Goldman Sachs
Hines
JCC
JP Morgan Chase
Liberty Mutual
Equity
MetLife
NYSE
Prudential
Related
TIAA-CREF
Time Warner

RETAIL & FINANCIAL
Bank of America
Disney
Home Depot
JC Penney
Kohls
Kroger
Macy’s
Sears Holdings
Staples
Verizon
Walgreens
Walmart
Wells Fargo

OIL & GAS
British Petroleum
Chevron
ConocoPhillips
Dow Chemical
Exxon Mobil
Marathon Oil
Sunoco
Valero Energy

NUCLEAR
Department of Energy (DOE)
Fluor Fernald
Fluor-B&W Portsmouth, LLC
General Electric
Kerr McGee
LATA Environmental Services of Kentucky, LLC
Magnox Ltd.
North Wind, Inc.
Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc.
Phelps Dodge
University at Buffalo – SUNY
University of Arizona
University of Illinois
University of Washington

POWER
ConEd
Dynegy
HECO
National Grid
NRG Energy
NYPA
PG&E
TECO
Xcel Energy

INDUSTRIAL
Boeing
Coca-Cola
General Electric
DuPont
Hewlett Packard
Honeywell
IBM
Intel
Johnson Controls
Lockheed Martin
PepsiCo
Raytheon
Samsung
US Gypsum
VMWare
Xerox

Needless to say I don't think we'll see any of those big name companies/agencies investing in Full Throttle batteries instead of USA made NorthStars. (Full Throttle also lists competing backup batteries).

The Full Throttle battery specs and docs are quite interesting and impressively detailed, but I'm not going to include a questionable quality China made battery with drastically lower RC at a more expensive price in a thread with one of the worlds most elite USA made battery manufactures. Your find is interesting and not trying to sound harsh in any way, but all my threads regardless of the topic are about sourcing the best of the best without compromise, and recommending those products to our members. I would not recommend an unproven more expensive Chinese battery with lower reserve capacity over the world leading USA made battery manufacture with proven exceptional AGM products.

 

I agree about questionable quality from China, but in my opinion, the gap has generally been closing for many years. If this were 2010, I would not be suggesting anyone consider these batteries!

Ultimately, since I don't have one of these batteries myself, I can't comment on the build quality.

Regarding pricing, y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶F̶u̶l̶l̶T̶h̶r̶o̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶2̶7̶F̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶$̶2̶7̶3̶ ̶i̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶a̶x̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶h̶i̶p̶p̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶R̶o̶c̶k̶A̶u̶t̶o̶.̶ (No core charge to mess with.) I paid $330 including tax for my NorthStar 27F last summer, after 10% discount and a $30 mail in rebate, and giving them my old battery (i.e., I paid $360, then got $30 back.)

Edit: Oh, and remember, you can always get 5% off at RockAuto. So that would make the price $260 shipped to SoCal.

Correction: As pointed out by @crashnburn80, this pricing is for the group 35 battery, not the 27! My bad!

 

OR just drop in a
Duralast Platinum AGM Battery 24F-AGM Group Size 24F 710 CCA
710 cold cranking amps (885 cranking amps)***. 120 reserve minutes.
for under $200
or put in a Duracell AGM 24F for $162 like i did 2 years ago (same maker as duralast and spec's) if you just need more, but not trying to live for days in the back country.
That is still better than a stock lead 24F and 27F

 

I second the motion of Duracell batteries, they are made by East Penn. I put together a DIY dual battery setup for a tad under $450 including 2 Duracell 34/78 batteries a few years ago.

https://www.eastpennmanufacturing.com/east-penn-releases-new-duracell-automotive-batteries/