Originally Posted by
crash
We always pay up and get the, IIRC, 72 month guaranteed batteries from Wally World. They never make it that long and usually only 2-3 years, but we haven't paid for a new battery in decades even though we get a couple new ones from Walmart every 2-3 years. This is at our place on the East Coast, where the cars and boat sit for 10 months out of the year. We put maintainers on them but the brutal cold weather does a number on unused batteries...and electronics in general for some reason. We've had to replace our microwave three times in the last ten years or so.
I only put Optima batteries in my vehicles on the West Coast and I have a couple of those that are about 15 years old and still working. The one in my daily driver is just starting to get weak and I looked at the sticker on it last weekend and it says 2017, so not bad, and the lack of acid issues is worth the extra cost to me for the sealed batteries. As we have discussed before, you just can't let the Optima batteries go dead and they last a long time.