shabbernigdo

why not just take the battery to an autozone or oreillys and let them put it on the charger / tester and just see if its dead or not.

ronjenx

It's too late for that.

ShutterBug

The battery on my 2014 lasted about 2 1/2 years. The stock battery can't take the offroad abuse. All the bouncing around and such. I did get Jeep to credit me 1/2 the cost of the replacement.

rob_engineer

It wasn't the off road abuse. The stock battery is just crap. Mine and many others died around the 2-3 year mark without any off road abuse. When mine died suddenly and prematurely I started a post on it. About a dozen more people chimed in that the same thing happened to them.

jkk9

Still on my orig battery. An auto 2012 unlimited, picked up Thanksgiving of 2011. Don't know if it made the difference, but only 8,500 miles to date and garaged.

ShutterBug

If you wheel your Jeep at all on any semi-regular basis, you are abusing the battery. Period. And if that's what makes it crap, then fine.

The stock battery is a lead acid battery. The jostling it receives off road causes the lead to break down and become less effective. If any one of the 6 cells in the battery become damaged, the whole battery is done.

The Odyssey Red Top is a gel based battery and does not use a liquid acid like the stock one. There are no lead plates to break down and can take the abuse.

rob_engineer

My point was wheeling isn't required to kill the crappy stock battery. It just sucks. Yes, wheeling is harder on a battery but the stock battery can die a premature death even without wheeling. I replaced my stock lead acid with a new Walmart lead acid. The Walmart one has seen more abuse than the stock one and is still going strong after 3 years.