I've been shocked that my 680 is still trucking. I hardly drive the car, throw the optimizer on it once in a while, and it's hanging in there. I should get it on the charger now that you remind me.. I also put a PC925 in the solar system for my driveway gates and that is holding up well in a tough environment (sitting in a battery box in the snow waiting for a few amps to flow)
Curious if you looked at any lithium batteries before going for the bigger AGM?
Hey Mike, well good to hear your 680 is working out, maybe you have been kinder to it than I was to mine. I only recently bought a smart charger that has a distinct AGM mode so maybe my charging (and discharging) behaviors were what killed it. Coupled with infrequent short trips I suppose.
Ah, the thought of having a driveway with gates is a nice one...someday!
I didn't seriously look at any lithium batteries, mostly because of cost, but also because they are more sensitive with how they are charged - either by an external battery charger or by the car's charging system. Balance charging is ideal for lithium cells and I'm not sure if a Denso 100A alternator would've kept a Li-ion battery happy. But mostly they cost too much... mostly.
Yeah, must have been the case. I don't remember how the halves were attached on mine but I know it's not an uncommon thing to have happen to the aftermarket ones. I've heard of folks redoing the plastic weld but I just replaced the whole thing having lost confidence in the part.
It's fun to hear about the little differences in aftermarket vs. OE parts on a supplier level. Although maybe less so in this case...
The breather box that failed on my car wasn't welded, it looked like the halves were stuck together with some form of urethane maybe.
Yeah it's definitely interesting to dive into the details of how a particular part is made, and how the design, materials, & manufacturing details change when the customer is an OE auto company vs. an aftermarket distributor network. There are also myriad complex legal arrangements and restrictions on how an OE part can be sold into the aftermarket, if at all. The classic thing is to grind the customer's logo off of your cast or molded part and sell it in a different box but even that isn't kosher when the customer (car manufacturer) paid for the tooling, or the production line, and so on. Sometimes as a supplier it's necessary to reverse engineer your own part, to an extent! Silly stuff. But yeah maybe the breather boxes are all made by Valeo or Hella or whomever, but they could be produced with different methods, in different plants on opposite sides of the world and have the same corporate source.
