It was 27 last night (probably "balmy" for some of you guys) and I went out this morning to see if leaving the OEM Nippon Denso on a charger for a few days had helped. Nope, it took a long time before the glow plug light went out and it only turned over once or twice real slow. I pulled it out and checked each cell with my ultra cheapo "floating ball" checker. 2 cells had none, 3 had two and 1 was still good. I was headed out the door to go buy a new battery when I walked past my sprayer. Staring at me was the old Optima 38 that I had bought in '05 and had replaced in late '13. I decided to see how it would fit. Turned out it was a lot smaller but the CCA rating was about 700 or 800 if I remember correctly (obviously not). I hooked it up and hopped up in the seat, turned the key and was happy to discover it had plenty of power to fire it up.
So for now my problem is solved till spring when I'll need to use my sprayer again.
Tonight I scoured the 'net and discovered that an Optima 34R has almost the same dimensions as the OEM battery. I also discovered that "R" indicates the posts are reversed meaning the positive is on the left side of a regular "34" and on the right of a "34R". I'm sure most of you guys already knew that but I'm tossing that out for the benefit of anyone following up later.
So now that I've bought some time, my next decision is whether to buy locally or online. I can save significant $$ from Amazon but there were a lot of reviews where people weren't able to get Amazon to warrant a bad battery. Apparently Amazon says take it to a local distributor and Optima says take it back to where you bought it.
Nothing's ever simple.
