Battery

Odyssey AGM or Northstar AGM if you need to run additional accessories. If not, then honestly whatever is cheaper at your local auto parts store is fine. In the civic that I daily and my wife’s car I don’t research myself into oblivion buying things like I do over my truck and I’ve never had any issues buying the basic stuff off the shelf like a normal person would, but I can spend months researching the same purchase for my truck.

 

^^^^^ I replaced my stock OEM battery with one of these after reading through a heap of battery threads on this forum. Looking from the details, the 27F seemed to be a good AGM choice for upgrades if you weren't going dual battery, and or didn't want the additional weight of a group 31. With a balance between a slight added weight for extra power/cranking juice, and reserve capacity over the OEM Battery. If you wanted to do the same, either Northstar, or if you buy it through a BatteriesPlus store, it's listed as an X2 Power AGM (same battery, but the X2 brand line is through them apparently). They usually always have a 10% off coupon you can use with it, and you have the core refund charge with you old battery. As for charging and all the hullabaloo about systems and charging voltage - get a battery tender and hook it up in your garage and plug it in overnight a day or so every week overnight and it'll work out.

^^^^I agree with this one hundred percent

 

I like AGMs because I’ve had flooded batteries leak. Buy one from some place that stocks them. There’s a decent chance you’ll replace it under warranty and the last thing you want is to have to wait for one to arrive by UPS.

 

How are you charging your AGMs? I’ve heard the alternator doesn’t provide the correct stages of charge? Basically, it runs a perpetual bulk stage, but never really finishes the charging stages and shortens the life of the battery.

 

I’ve heard the same things you’ve heard, but in a practical sense I get the same life out of AGMs and flooded batteries—about 4 years in general, give or take.

 

If you're getting your truck tuned anyway (I wouldn't do it for just this reason necessarily), you can get a tune that adjusts the alternator output for the AGM battery.

 

I would second this, and that is also why I switched to an AGM battery; there isn't a liquid to spill or need topping off ever. One less than to worry about.

If you aren't doing something with the trucks charging system in the vehicle, plug it into a charger over night in your garage (ie battery tender charger or maintainer). That should solve any minor charge voltage issues as you are topping off that small voltage difference between the AGM and lead acid charging voltages. As long as you aren't driving across the country or going to Alaska, one overnight a week probably would be sufficient.