RE: [ihc] Shockingly blue

["Ed Sohm" <idaemes@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim, 
Not to rain on your parade, but I have a little story.  

Our local NAPA carried these Exide spirals for a while and when I
inquired about them, the counterman told me that every single one they
had sold had come back to them.  Small town, so he may have been only
talking about 5 or so.  A year later or so, July of 02, our local farm
store had 3 Exide spiral cells on their clearance table for $75 each.
Their explanation was that they were no longer doing business with Exide
and since these were expensive, they were the last to go.  I bought one
for me, one for my brother in law, and my dad bought one on my advice.
8 months later one died, dropped a cell.  The farm store wouldn't take
it because they didn't have one like it to trade.  They now carry
Optimas, but wouldn't give me one of them. <shucks> The Napa no longer
carries Exide either.  We have a Pamida store, kind of a regional
department (discount?) store and I noticed that they had some spiral
cell Exides at $130 each.  They weren't supposed to trade me because
they hadn't sold it to me, but they were in the process of getting rid
of all the high month (72+) Exides because they had so much trouble with
them coming back.  Plus, they like me (small town again). All 3 current
ones seem to be working fine, but we are a long way from 84 months.
We'll see how they hold up.

I'm cheap like you and couldn't pass up a deal.  I am holding the
receipts pretty tight though.  I'll bet I can keep trading until Pamida
is out of them, then I guess I will have to dig up the Exide 800 number
or find another store somewhere that carries Exide. The two Pamida has
left will just keep getting older.  

I hope that someone else has had the opposite experience with Exide
Spirals.  Maybe someday, some store will trade me for an Optima. Maybe I
won't have any more problems.  
 

Ed Sohm
Battle Creek, IA 

'71 800 B
'74 200 4X4 Travelette Camper Special (Exide Spiral cell)
+ a bunch more
'96 2500 Suburban (Exide Spiral Cell)
    



  

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ihc@domain.elided [mailto:owner-ihc@domain.elided] On Behalf Of
Jim Grammer
Sent: Monday, May 17, 2004 9:18 AM
To: ihc@domain.elided
Subject: [ihc] Shockingly blue


Sit down before you fall over....

As some of you know, I am a tight-fisted sot. Scot's blood, I guess ;)

However, I'm *really* tired of cleaning up after 'wet' lead/acid
batteries.
So when 4WPW sent me an email that their 'orbital' batteries were $99.95
I
couldn't resist. These are the Exide version of the Optima concept,
identical to what CSK sells. I got the blue top deep cycle and put it in
the
SII. They are a group 34something, and not as tall as a standard group
24.
That's a good thing for hood clearance, but a bad thing for the stock
SII
battery clamp bolt on the inner fender. Mine's busted off anyway, so I'm
changing out the battery tray to a plastic unit with a J bolt on both
sides.
The combo will still be shorter than a group 24 in the stock tray, and
there'll be more clearance between the battery tray and the p/s pump.

Time will tell about the service life, but they sure seem like a good
deal.
That sale price has been repeated a few times in the past month or so.

Jim