This is true. I sold auto parts for 3 years and almost every battery produced in this country is made by Johnson controls. But as mentioned they all have slightly different specs and build features. With that said, I worked for both AutoZone and Advance I can say that Advance (Autocraft) batteries seem to be pretty good, where as the AutoZone (Duralast) seemed to fail on a semi regular basis. I didn't have many returns on the Autocraft deep cycle batteries, in fact I'm not sure if I ever returned a deep cycle at Advance aside from cores.
Batteries Plus also sells good quality batteries at reasonable prices, and they are made by DEKA. I wouldn't give an Optima battery to my worst enemy. They are just an expensive paper weight these days. When they were made here in Aurora they were fantastic batteries that lived forever it seemed like. Since they moved manufacturing operations to Mexico quality has really sucked. Almost every Optima I've ever sold was returned completely dead in the water before the 3 year warranty expired. My boss put TWO Optimas in his Lexus in 2 years and finally put an Autocraft in his car after the 2nd failure. They are so bad I actually stopped selling them to people because I was sick of getting pissed off customers that spent $200+ on a new battery and it end up being dead 18 months later. Just my 2 cents.
The cheapest I have found was at Home depot. I didn't notice if there were any deep cycle but found them to be a lot cheaper than parts stores or Wally World. Might be worth checking out.
i think sears have the platnuim on sale like 25% off for 4th of July,maybe over. those are great batterys, also check to see if there is a Hensley in Denver area they have Deka AGMs, great batterys and good prices.
I have ordered 3 optima batteries from amazon. One did show up with a small crack on the top. I emailed them and they sent me a new one, it showed up in 3 days. I put a little glue over the crack on the cracked one and use it with no problems. I am pretty happy with Amazon and the batteries. The price was cheaper on Amazon than any other place I could find, and being a prime member, it shipped for free and took about 3 days for each one.
Interesting to hear about Optima. They were developed by Gates Rubber Co. on South Broadway in Denver before they started making them in Aurora. Good to know there are alternatives.
I use the Cabelas AGM batteries. They work great (even though they were made in china). Price is OK when they are on sale.
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