Did you know many of the “bad” batteries returned to retailers are really just deeply-discharged and work fine, when properly-recharged?  Unfortunately, many battery chargers simply will not work on batteries that have been discharged below a minimum voltage level, which can be as high as 10.5 volts!

OPTIMA’s new Digital 1200 12-volt battery charger can recover many deeply-discharged batteries, including batteries discharged all the way down to 1.25 volts!  That’s great news for any battery owner, but what if you don’t own one of these chargers yet?

There are some other methods for recovering deeply-discharged batteries and we decided to create a YouTube video, which explains the options most consumers have in recovering deeply-discharged batteries.  Be sure to check it out, because the few minutes you spend watching that video could end up saving you time and money that might otherwise be spent buying a new battery.

Last month, we brought you the extended version of our new OPTIMA RedTop battery commercial, featuring Mark Stielow’s amazing Red Devil Camaro.  This month, we present to you the :30 second spot in all it’s glory.

While you’re visiting our YouTube channel, be sure to check out some of our other videos.  We have fishing reports from OPTIMA pro angler, Edwin Evers, Tech Tip videos covering everything from charging our batteries to selecting the right battery for your application and even a few interviews with our sponsored NHRA drivers.

In fact, OPTIMA Jim is headed down to Georgia this weekend for the NHRA race and he will probably interview the drivers again.  If you have any questions you’d like to ask Alexis DeJoria, Jeff ARend, Doug Kalitta or Dave Grubnic, be sure to post them in the comments section on our videos.

Have you heard of Pinterest yet?  If not, let us bring you up to speed.  Pinterest is a site for sharing photos and originally became very popular with women.  While that is still the case, an increasing number of men are signing up. Why would men care about new hairstyles, favorite recipes or fashion tips?  They may not, but Pinterest has plenty of photos that interest men as well.

We signed up a while back and we’ll admit, we’re pretty addicted to it.  Pinterest allows you to create your own cyber bulletin boards, where you can “pin” your favorite pictures.  OPTIMA now has 14 such boards, each dedicated to something different.

If you want to see photos of vehicles from SEMA, we have a board dedicated to it.  The same is true for drag racing, open road and salt flat racing, boat racing and tournament fishing, off road, road racing and autocross racing and a board that shows our favorite places to do all of that stuff and more.  We even have boards set up just for station wagons, red vehicles, yellow vehicles and blue vehicles!  If users find a board they like, they can follow updates to that board or every board from that user.

Pinterest also has an app that allows you to view photos on your smart phone.  Stuck at a doctor’s office with a stack of Ladies Home Journal and National Geographic and not a hot rod magazines in sight?  Open up your Pinterest app and start browsing photos of the most-amazing vehicles on the planet.  If you have a thing for non-Cobra Jet ’69 Mercury Cyclones, search for those and start pinning them to your own board.  If you still aren’t convinced, check out OPTIMA’s pinboards and see if there aren’t more than a few photos that appeal to you.  Once you check it out, we think you’ll get hooked!  Once you sign up, be sure to follow a few of our boards, so you’ll know what is going on in the world of OPTIMA.

OPTIMA angler, Tommy Skarlis won the National Guard FLW Walleye Tour season opener on the Mississippi River in dominating fashion this past weekend with a three-day total of 14 walleyes weighing 72 pounds, 8 ounces, which was held at Red Wing, Minnesota and presented by Evinrude.

Skarlis, who runs a Ranger 620VS powered by a 250 H.O. Evinrude E-TEC main engine and Evinrude E-TEC 15 H.O. kicker engine and a bank of OPTIMA BlueTop batteries, led all three days of the tournament. He started out with an incredible 36 pound, 12 ounce haul on the first day, which put him ahead by more than nine pounds. The Waukon, Iowa native added to his total Friday with 20 pounds, 13 ounces and held a 17-pound lead entering the final day.

“I was playing defense after day one, but fishing with such quality anglers I knew I could get beaten if I stumbled,” said Skarlis. In addition to his $63,000 pay day from FLW, Skarlis also won the $8,000 Evinrude contingency bonus for his first place finish.

The FLW Walleye Tour season opener on the Mississippi River will be featured in the Sept. 23 episode of ‘FLW’ which will be broadcast in high-definition (HD) on NBC Sports Network from 1 – 2 p.m. ET. The tour’s next tournament is May 10-12 in Port Clinton, Ohio on Lake Erie.

Unfortunately, the story behind this Group D27M BlueTop is a familiar one.  It’s owner contacted us, frustrated with the performance of his battery.  Even though the battery was well outside of warranty coverage, it’s owner felt OPTIMA owed him some sort of resolution, because he couldn’t get the battery to charge above 12.5 volts.

The best we could offer was to send him another battery that we knew tested good, but also had no warranty, in exchange for his battery.  When his old battery arrived, it sat under a desk for almost a week, before we had a chance to check and charge it. Surprisingly, the battery measured 12.57 volts, even though the owner claimed he couldn’t get his charger to charge it up to 12.5 volts.

After measuring the initial voltage, we connected it to the OPTIMA Digital 1200 battery charger. With one touch convenience, the charger went to work, recharging the battery.  A few hours later, the voltage measured a solid 13.02 volts, well within the range of what would be considered acceptable for this battery.  Is the OPTIMA Digital 1200 a miracle worker for batteries?  While it is capable of charging batteries that have been deeply-discharged down to 1.25 volts, it may not have performed any miracles on this battery.

The pre-charge voltage indicated the battery likely had more voltage than the owner realized.  If that is the case, it would be the second time in the last two weeks that we’ve heard from someone who was getting incorrect voltage readings on their battery.  If it did recover a battery that the original owner couldn’t manage to charge properly, then the OPTIMA Digital 1200 battery charger could have already paid for itself with one use, as a new D27M BlueTop will run $254.99 at shop.optimabatteries.com before a $25 mail-in rebate, while the OPTIMA Digital 1200 battery charger is only $199.99.

In hindsight, we wished we had tried to first recharge the battery with a regular battery charger, just to see if the owner was getting incorrect voltage readings.  Either way, it is a good idea to check the voltage before and after charging, to make sure the battery charger is doing it’s job and if the voltage readings seem unusual, that the volt meter is doing it’s job.