Dead battery or??

My 2018 model with 18 months and 4500 miles was replaced under warranty.
It had died several times over the previous 3 months after sitting a week in the garage.

 

Truck is at the dealer now. Luckily this started right after I had already made an appointment. Their problem now ‍♂️

 

I've had batteries last 8 months, and others 8 years in my Tacoma. Just about anything electrical is highly unpredictable. It's not like mechanical devices where you can predict pretty closely how many cycles something is going to last. It's not necessarily poor quality, sometimes stuff just happens.

 

I had a 2016 that this happened on. According to the dealer up here it was a bad cell in the battery that caused the battery to lose charge. If its still under warranty it'd probably be best to have them replace the battery altogether

 

Buy a battery tester. They are cheap - about $40.

All you have to do is connect to the battery and will tell you if your battery is good or bad and how many cold cranking amps (cca) are left.

When you get a new battery (or vehicle) do a baseline test of cca and then track as it degrades.

Mark

 

I’ll buy one after this replacement! If it goes out again I’ll get a optima.

 

gen 3 batterys are notoriously rubbish! all it takes is a few to many short trips and and the thing stops holding a full charge. hook up a volt meter and if its less than 12 volts( realy should be like 13.3volts) take it to the stealership and get a new one.

 

exactly how mine acted and I replaced it, I was about 1 month shy of 5 yrs. on the stock battery.

 

You might want to look into that a little more, from what I hear the quality of Optima’s has gone downhill.

As an example I run a Yellow Top in one of my VW’s and had to replace it last week due to it no longer charging past 11 Volts (probably lost a couple of cells) it was 1.5 years old. I will say that Autozone exchanged my bad Yellow Top for a brand new one, no questions asked (I had the receipt). We’ll see how long the new one lasts. To be fair it starts a high-compression turbo engine, powers three radios, gets bounced around a lot and lives in a car which can go a month without being started or charged. That said the first Yellow Top I ran in that car lasted seven years and was still good when I pulled it out.

For my other trucks I’ve had good luck with house-brand Autozone and O’Reilly batteries. If the one in my 3rd Gen fails while the truck is under warranty I’ll let the dealer replace it on their dime.

 

Correct. Ever seen a King of the Hammers truck burn to the ground from a faulty yellow top battery? Not the only story either...

 

Great, one more thing for me to worry about

 

It could happen with any brand, but I have heard of more failures (99.99% of the time a dead cell, etc) regarding Optima than competitors.

I personally rock an X2 / Northstar battery and am a happy and non-flammable camper.

 

I’ll keep that in mind for the future. If Autozone/Optima hadn’t warrantied my Optima, I would have replaced it with something else. My other VW and my dual-sport motorcycle are running Odyssey batteries which I’ve been very happy with.