The NorthStar AGM Battery + Voltage Booster Upgrade

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

$460 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/

 

It looks like the price you are quoting is for a Group 35 battery, the comparable Full Throttle 27F from Rock Auto is listed at $323, which is a bit better than the prices I found searching for a few minutes and does make them slightly cheaper than Northstar but the savings is pretty minor. I agree that the quality of things manufactured in China has been improving, hence my earlier comment that there is nothing inherently wrong with that from a manufacturing standpoint, but it is a much larger unknown. Their technical documentation is fantastic, but given their relatively low performance in RC I just don't see much of a draw for these AGMs. Obviously there are many different AGM batteries and manufactures to chose from fitting differing price points and performance levels, not everyone is willing to pay top dollar for the best and there is nothing wrong with that. Realistically it is overkill and most people don't need it. However the Full Throttle batteries are coming in at a high enough price point that they are competing against NorthStar without offering anything that is significantly better. If they were nearly $100 cheaper as you quoted above, I think the draw would be there for some. But at the current price point I don't expect the Full Throttle batteries to be very popular.

 

You are totally correct, I was looking at the 35, not the 27. My bad.

I wound up just shelling out the $120 for a new flooded battery for my beater car. I don't think that car has 3+ years left anyway... so sadly I won't be providing any feedback on the Full Throttle or any other brand of AGM for that car. Cheers!

 

haha Ive had the same exact thoughts before.

Also, not to get off topic here, but country of origin really has nothing to do with it. It all comes down to the company (or parent company), their internal QAQC & design practices, and where they place their values (quality vs profit).

 

To complement. Long term profits, or short term, coupled with heavy warranty replacement.

 

This thread is very useful like all of @crashnburn80 's threads, so thanks boss- please don't ever leave us even if you have a sick gladiator now haha.

I know these aren't AGM but these new Battle Born internally heated batteries are interesting to me in a cold place like CO for a second battery for aux power, though I know it's not recommended to combine AGM and Li batteries with a dual setup. Extremely spendy but they have a 10 yr warranty:
https://battlebornbatteries.com/product/heated-100ah-12v-battery/

 

If you run a DC-DC charger like CTEK or Redarc then having different battery types isn't an issue.

 

Ahh thanks, I have a redarc ready to go and haven't wired it up yet but I had seen conflicting discussions on that. Now that I dig deeper looks as though you are correct. Makes this battle born even more appealing.

 

The redarc manual should cover how to hook up the trigger wire to obtain the different charging voltages dependent on the chemistry of aux battery

 

Has anyone used this voltage booster?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Low-Profil...ter-Toyota-Tacoma-4Runner-Tundra/164473578711

It's made by a FJ cruiser member I think.

 

someone has posted pics of how they made their own in this thread...

 

Just remember, now matter how vigilant we may be, we won't need deep cycle batteries in the future. About 10 years from now unless you hoard an old car, the government will start your vehicle (fire up the old electric heating blanket) when it thinks you want to go somewhere or you owe taxes. With that said, I'm keeping as many old regular starting gasoline/diesel manual vehicles as I can until they pry them from my cold dead hands

 

So Jeep owners will finally get around some for a change then.

 

Going to give this a try

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/littelfuse-inc/02400113P/2519818

1.0A 400V mini fuse diode

manufacture part number: 02400113P

It comes up when I search for the Ford part

damn, back ordered

nope.. wait.. Mouser has it... $15 for two shipped via FedEx

I'm apparently not the first to try this digikey part

 

Also interested if this is a viable option.
Thanks @crashnburn80

 

Seems like a viable solution, but the range for the boost is concerning. 0.5v is good, 0.7v is too high. They list it as 0.5v-0.7v. Seems like they should know the specs on what they are selling.

 

It shows 14.341 volts. Others have posted feedback about it. I mailed him about an exact figure