The batteries at my local Walmart are all East Penns.
Update me please on the battery market/what's reliable, etc.
- Thread starter Oro_O
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East Penn isn't the original maker for Diehard batteries. I've never seen a Diehard battery made by East Penn, all the ones I've ever seen were obviously Johnson Controls batteries. EDIT: The original maker for Diehard batteries was Globe-Union, a company later purchased by Johnson Controls.
"In Cook County Circuit Court, Sears sued former employee Gary Marks of Lake Zurich, charging that he had accepted bribes to steer the DieHard contract to Exide from Johnson Controls Inc., the original manufacturer of DieHard, a brand created by Sears 35 years ago."
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-12-28-0112280360-story.html
https://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/1997/06/09/tidbits.html
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Walmart sells batteries made by East Penn where I live. Serial number starts with "EP".
Trav, what's your opinion on AC Delco batteries. Thanks.
At some point Enersys made them, as I owned a few of them.
AGMs or standard batteries? Far as I can determine Enersys only makes AGM car batteries. They may have made standard (wet cell) car batteries at one time, but that must have been quite a long time ago.
Yes, Sears got their Platinum batteries (AGM) from Enersys.
The one in the fj looks a lot like an odyssey to me. isnt odyssey owned by enersys?
My WM sells Clarios....so it's hard to say one brand is better than the other when there constantly changing manufactures.
So far AAA did very well for me. Most of my 3 year + warranty battery are greats. The 1 year warranty one from Walmart, not so great.
Just about everyone of the JC flooded cell batteries I’ve seen over the last 3 years have leaked. That’s quite a few leaking Motorcraft batteries when you work at a Ford dealership.
GM sold their battery division to Johnson Controls (now Clarios). There's really no telling who makes their batteries, and they could be sourced from any number of different companies.
The carmakers are fairly brand agnostic. To them, these are commodity parts that meet a minimum standard that they're fine with. I remember looking under the hood of a Honda in a showroom back in the 1990s, and it had a Delco Freedom battery back when GM made it.
I'll just say I had a decent experience with an ACDelco battery back around 2003. I found a specialty parts store that mostly carried ACDelco parts, and they even had a Group 51R that I needed for my 1995 Integra GS-R.
Yes they are owned by Enersys. And both of those were made by Odyssey.
I had to pay about 40% more for a branded Odyssey in my truck.
Each of my last two AC Delco batteries have lasted 7 years. I’m now on my third. These are the maintenance free type.
The East Penn ( Deka) plant is local to me. I never worked there, but have known many that did. They definitely did manufacture the Sears Diehard battery for many years. I'm fairly sure that they held the original contract for Sears. Not sure when the contract went to Johnson Controls, perhaps late 90's, early 2000's.
The Deka employees had a bennie ( maybe they still do?) of two free batteries a year. Employees were always getting hounded by family and friends for a free Diehard.
The DieHards sold in the last 15 years by Sears were either EP or JC, the product number had the EP or JC at the beginning, the EP usually costed a bit more for the same size battery. There was also a regional thing going on like with Walmart, here there are no EP they are all JC and not very good.
EDIT: Are you sure it wasn't the Exide plant that your buddies worked at? It's only 30 minutes from the East Penn plant...
From the Jun 8, 1997 Milwaukee Business Journal I linked previously:
"Three years after losing a $170 million contract to make Sears DieHard car batteries, Johnson Controls Inc. is in the running to win some of that business back.
In April 1994, Sears Roebuck & Co. severed its ties with the Glendale manufacturer which made the DieHard for 27 years. Sears awarded contracts to Reading, Pa.-based Exide Corp. and the A-C Delco unit of General Motors Corp."
1994 - 27 = 1967
1967 is when the DieHard was introduced. As I stated previously, Globe-Union was the original company that Sears contracted with to make their batteries in 1967. Globe-Union was purchased by Johnson Controls in 1979.
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