If you can afford it.....

Sears diehard platinum

Then look at...

Deka

Interstate

just my opinion....


The really bad thing about batteries is this....for a particular customer jci might make 6 of their models of batteries, then they have Deka make the rest of their models....so its not just one manufacturer under the same brand label....gotta research the brand label sources...

 

Optima yellow top battery is my choice and what I'm going to be replacing my 2009's battery with shortly

 

Same here. 3 years in the Arizona heat destroys a battery.

 

Optima, Odyssey, Braille are all good batteries.

 

Optima is made by JCI

Odyssey is made by EnerSys a leader in AGM batteries and another good choice

Braille is made by Deka

 

Optima is owned by JCI but still manufactured by same means & plant as before which wasn't all that great in the recent past. Another battery is Rolls Royce.

We are starting to get into AGM batteries here at work and learning that they may not be as heat tolerant as wet cells.

For guys with MY11+ truck and with a reader/chip or whatever, there is a PID to monitor the batteries state of charge. Therefore, you can keep an eye on it every once in awhile.

 

We had problems with the Optima's in our work vehicles. The guys working at night all the time would slowly drain the battery. Had to put the battery on a slow charge to get it back up to full power.

 

From what I understand about Optima they were a good battery until they sold in early 2000s and then quality went down the drain. I had 2 problems with Sears and both were dry cells. Bjs or Cosco. Always had great luck.

 

The battery on my 09 F150 died earlier in January and I got it jumped and since then it has never gone dead, but ever since then I have had a trailer control module fault message coming up in the info center. Could this be due to a weak or poor battery. I bought the truck in May '11 and I think the battery may be original. Also, my battery seems to have a little red light on top of it. Never seen this on a battery before, any insight on that?

 

you'll need to take the truck truck to a dealer for them to diagnose the trailer control module....

Red Eye Indication on battery

TSB 06-4-2 States that a red indication in the battery eye means the battery is 40% or less charged, yellow 40 to 57% charged, green 57% or more charged. Red does not mean the battery is bad. The TSB also states that the battery may continue to have a red indication even if it is 100% charged; this is due to a fault in the ***** that give the battery eye it's indication. If the battery stays red the only way of knowing it's charge is to hook it up to a battery tester or just turn your ignition to the run position without starting the engine and look at the battery indications on the dashboard.

 

Ford made a change to battery eye in fall of 2008 as a running change so depending on when your 2009 was built may or may not have the following updated battery eye indicator:

Green: 75 - 100% SOC
Black: 40 - 75% SOC
Red: <40% SOC

So the red never changed, yellow ball was deleted and SOC range was changed.

 

ATC will act strange too.

 

Atc?

 

Odyssey is the best, same as Sears premium battery. Optimas, not so much.........some have had reasonable luck with them, but most will not re-purchase them.

 

ATC....automatic temperature control