Installed a part on your Civic and want to give your opinion? Please do here!
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By suspendedHatch
#85244 Odyssey PC680 Auto Battery

The Odyssey PC680 is a motorcycle battery that is widely rebadged, marked up, and sold as a race car battery. With a weight savings of 13 lbs from your stock battery, and a retail price around $120 US, it's much more cost effective than anything made from carbon fiber (especially if you are in need of a new battery anyway).

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Odyssey PC680 shown in front of an Interstate 51R stock sized battery for 92-95 Civic

It's also a sealed type, deep cycle battery; making it ideal for use in a weekend racer. Sealed batteries can be mounted in the trunk w/out emitting harmful and explosive gasses. It's compact and can be mounted on it's side, upright, or upside down. Odyssey sells a mounting bracket that can be used to mount it in the trunk or on the firewall after extensive shaving.

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Mounting bracket sold separately.

The PC680 comes in several flavors. The PC680MJ stands for Metal Jacket, which increases weight and isn't useful in our application. The PC680T and PC680MJT come with Terminals which are necessary if you want to actually use the battery in your car.

There are a few drawbacks to using this battery. One drawback is that if you have a lot of difficulty starting your car, it's pretty easy to kill it by cranking too long. After about 5 cranks of 10 seconds each, the battery is dead.

A second drawback is that it's only rated at 220 Cold Cranking Amps* (compared to the Interstate 51R's 500CCA)! This is irrelevant to you if you live in a warm climate like San Diego. But if you suddenly move to Salt Lake City where it drops below freezing, you may find it necessary to carry around a battery jumper pack during the winter months. Hm, who might I be referring to?

The third drawback is that this pipsqueak little battery looks pretty silly in the stock mounting location. Here you can see how much smaller it is than the stock battery.

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One thing I recommend to extend the life of any car battery (and possibly the life of your alternator) is to get a quality battery tender like this one I got from Summit Racing.

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Most battery tenders will come with two sets of cables. One with alligator clips, and one with ring terminals. In the pic below I show how I connected it for easy plug in. The negative ring terminal simply slips under the bolt where the battery ground goes to the shock tower. The positive ring terminal goes one of the positive posts under the fuse box cover. I had to dremel a small gap for it to fit through.

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Review
Having owned this battery for 3-4 years and used it on my daily driver, I can confidently give it my seal of approval. I would give it a 8 out of 10, deducting a point for being ugly, and another for low CCA's.

It takes a lot of abuse (draining a battery down cuts it's life short) and keeps coming back. It's just as good today as the day I bought it. In fact I have two of them and one of them sat in a box in my garage for about 9 months until I decided to get my Integra running again. I dusted it off, put it on the trickle charger, and the next morning I was running errands.


Odyssey Battery Specs
http://www.odysseybatteries.com/battery/pc680series.htm

Interstate Battery Specs
http://www.interstatebatteries.com/cs_eStore/Products/RT/PID-MT-51R(Automotive+Truck).aspx?dsNavigation=Nu~Part%20Number,Ns~product%20Type|101|1|,N~21-4294493445-4294493444-2147384752-4294493455

*CCA Cold Cranking Amps refers to the amount of current the battery puts out at 0 degrees F. Every battery loses strength when the temperatures are cold. Further, engines are harder to turn over at low temperatures. These two factors lead to a lot of frost bitten toes for people living at high altitudes and/or northern latitudes, but it's not a concern for people living in southern California . :lol: