Optima red top 34R battery NOT recommended

Optima red top used to be awesome years ago, but no longer. Often a single deep discharge will kill it, and many times they suffer short life. Red top is oem installed in 430 Scuderias and 16Ms. Ferrari even uses a special battery tray that is a custom fit for the Optima red top. To use something else requires replacing the battery tray with one from a regular F430 at a cost of several hundred dollars of course.

My 430 Scuderia is on its second red top, from reviewing records, and is about 6 years old and was testing as borderline failing. I ordered another red top, as I didn't want to mess with replacing the battery tray. While removing the old red top, what do I find? Its freaking leaking! (appears to be venting out the two black foam things on the top) Something obviously was failing to cause it to leak out the vents. Another reason red top sucks. I cleaned up the battery tray best I could with some baking soda, but it is permanently etched. Fortunately it did not migrate below the tray onto the chassis or frame. Being a glutton for punishment, I went ahead and installed the new red top I ordered recently online.
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Interstate, I believe the group 48 AGM fits better than the 34R (there is a thread on Fchat discussing that a regular 34R battery is a tight fit). Note that the Optima red top is rated at 800CCA and the Interstate group 48 is rated at 730 CCA. The Interstate group 34R is rated at 800CCA. The Interstate group 48 AGM is top rated by Consumer Reports recently.

With either 34R or 48, you will need to replace the battery tray in a 430 Scuderia or 16M (if delivered in North America) to a standard F430 battery tray, as the Scuderia/16M version (for NA) is sized with cut outs to specifically fit the Optima. Looks like this is the part
https://www.ricambiamerica.com/car-diagrams/ferrari/v6-v8/430-group/f430-05-08/battery/67943100-battery-bin.html

 

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First few years a Granite Save a Battery, but been using that on my BMW now. The past couple years I have used the Griots Garage Battery Manager IV. Both are compatible with AGM, and the Griots actually has a specific charge setting for AGM that it defaults to, which means it is always on that setting when I plug it in.

 

Yes, but the battery tender used for a lithium has to be one of two types. Either specifically made for charging lithium, or a standard type microprocessor controlled battery tender. By standard, I mean one that does not have "anti sulfation" or other type special charge settings. It simply charges the battery then goes into a float mode, nothing else. No temperature compensation, etc. I believe the reason is lithium chemistry is more sensitive to the higher voltage applied by such things as temperature compensation, anti-sulfation and the like. If you read up on lithium car and motorcycle batteries, the manufacturers give warnings about this, and how to charge. I used to use a simple "wall wart" 1 amp microprocessor charger for my lithium motorcycle battery...but all the warnings scared me into simply purchasing a dedicated lithium specific "wall wart" charger from Deltran. It's been five years now, and the battery still works well...though has lost some compacity when I load tested it recently. I usually only get two to four years max with a standard flooded cell battery on my motorcycle I have owned for 33 years. So the lithium is working out to be a good value for this application

 

Since all of my battery tenders are microprocessor controlled to prevent over charging, then yes, it is possible there was internal cell failure of the battery that caused the battery tender to over charge. Fine, further proves that Optima red top batteries suck.

 

Consumer Reports top rates the Interstate AGM batteries