I loved my Braille 17 lb battery, it was a perfect balance between power and weight savings. It had more CCA than the oem battery it replaced, saved approx. 13 lbs and worked flawlessly for all the years I had it. it was an AGM battery so nothing fussy about it, it was easy to maintain, it worked well at low temps. I easily went 4 weeks without driving and never had to worry about trickle charging it. It does cost more than an average battery but they are quality batteries. The are far better than the toy powersports batteries people try to use in S2000s.

 

I still have an OEM battery from 2012. Still fires up with no hesitation every time.

 

Eight years is a LONG time for any battery. Hope you have jumper cables and/or AAA.

 

Haha... I have both! I keep thinking I should replace the battery proactively.
But even if the car sits for a week or more it still starts up without missing a beat.

 

OK cool

 

What's the specs of the OEM battery? CCA, reserve time, etc?

 

Part number is 31500-SB2-100M in case you wanna look up specs. Most important spec (for a normal car that isn't a race car or isn't running some crazy sound system) is that it has a 100 month warranty IMO.

 

CCA on OEM battery is 500.

 

Just wanted to provide some info regarding my experience with the Shorai LFX36L3-BS12 battery. I recently installed a new HKS supercharger kit which requires either relocating the stock battery or moving to one that is smaller in size in order to accommodate a rotated fuse box. After much research I decided to move forward with the Shorai, even though I was aware of a user here on S2ki reporting that his Shorai melted. In the case of his incident it appears to be caused by jump starting the battery. Therefore my logic is... buy the Shorai charger, keep it on the tender when not in use, don't jump start the car and I should be alright. After all there are quite a few S2K's in the community that are running the battery just fine.

Fast forward 4 weeks after the install, I make a stop at my local target for a 10 min supply run only to come out to the S2k not responding to my key fob. After multiple failed attempts to unlock the car doors using the Honda key fob I noticed a very strong odor emanating from the front of my car. I can only describe the smell as something similar to a fried motherboard but 1000 times stronger. So I popped the hood and to my surprise a huge plume of smoke came out from under the hood and I could see the Shorai battery smoking profusely. In fear that the batter would eventually catch on fire I went into target picked up some tools and removed it as quickly as possible.

Keep in mind up to this point I did everything possible to prevent overcharging and discharging the battery past recommended stable voltage and the battery has been perfectly functional the past 4 weeks. I wish I had the opportunity to take a picture of the battery before the fire dept took it away... it was melted beyond recognition (yes a target employee called the fire dept as my car was smoking heavily in the parking lot).

I'm grateful that things didn't take a turn for the worse and I'm providing this feedback to the community as I would hate to see an S2K bite the dust.

In the end, my 04 S2000 with 25kmiles which still had the new car smell, is now replaced with a stench of burnt electronics, I have a Shorai charger that is of no use to me, and I'm out $350 for the battery....

I'm not saying that this will happen to every Shorai battery out there, but just a word of caution for you all.

 

Dang. Thx for the detailed report.

Burnt electronics smell even worse than Jello, am I right?