I haven't replaced a car battery in over 15 years, so I have no idea what the good brands are any more. I've used Diehard in the past, with good results. I've heard that Optima went to the dogs, but have never used one, so have no experience with them. I saw on another post that the H8 was the largest battery we could use, so I'm looking to go this route. At any rate, I just moved to Arizona and was told by several people that batteries don't last long here. Since I still have the original battery in my '18, I'm just researching my best options at this point. Thanks for your input!

 

I've had good luck with Bosch AGM's

 

I have replaced all my vehicles batteries with Everstart from Wal-Mart, nationwide warranty 24/7 with stores in every decent sized city. Although I have never really needed to have one replaced in an emergency situation. Just put one in my wifes 2014 Flex after the original battery was getting weak a couple weeks go.

 

I had one Everstart have an intermittent short in one of the cells years ago. It would work fine for a while then suddenly no juice. Bang on the battery and voila full power. Took forever to figure out, and any time I brought the battery in to get tested they said it was 100% good. I had to buy a new battery to replace...annoyed me enough to not buy them ever again. Added bonus is not having to walk into a Walmart.

and yes Optima batteries are now junk... they just take all their profits from overcharging people for their inferior products to pay off websites to list them as the #1 battery to buy.

 

It's weird that my OEM lasted over 7 years and that almost lead me to replace it with a OEM, since Ford had a special going on for $104. But when I took the old battery out, the positive post was loose and breaking away from the casing, first I have seen that. All battery brands will have a bad one every so often. I though have never had issues with Everstarts. I loathe going into any store at any time, just my personality.........

 

Costco (Interstate) or AutoZone (Duralast Gold/Platinum), that's all you need.

 

I have had nothing but good luck out of Walmart Everstart batteries. I have one that turned 8 in October. It's still going strong.

I had a Autozone Duralast Gold with a 96 month warranty in my 1977. It lasted 18 years.

 

Optima is junk. I prefer a US-made AGM, which leaves you two options:
Northstar - most commonly found at BatteriesPlus as the "X2Power" brand... good stuff, not cheap
Deka/East Penn - these are branded as Duracell Ultra Platinum, O'Reilly Super Start Platinum, and others.

I'm currently running X2Powers in my trucks and Super Start Platinums in my fire apparatus. No issues with either.

If you're changing size and/or chemistry, you should plug in with Forscan and change the battery type so BMS uses that extra capacity. Plus do a BMS reset.

 

I just replaced the battery in my 2016 5.0 and bought the Motorcraft from the dealer.

 

I had a 2017 XL work truck that the battery went south on at around 40K miles I also still have a 2017 XLT that had more miles on it 60K, but probably way fewer starts on it and battery was still good, but I went ahead and replaced both with Auto Zone Gold they had more CCA than the factory batteries and I noticed more snapper quicker starts with the new batteries.