Excellent.... we have Batteries Plus right near here... I'll hit that up on lunch break and see if they've got the Battery Tender Plus

So the Optima Yellow is not going to slide around in the factory location?

P.S. To NCX and everyone else, thanks for all the advice .... you've been extremely helpful

You're welcome! You can use the factory hold-down, plus you can put a shim under the metal retaining arm to secure the other end of the battery. See this post for a visual aid: http://www.xoutpost.com/102933-post6.html

Have a great trip.

So I was reading up a bit, and one poster indicates that the Optima Red would be better suited than the Optima Yellow... is this true? From the manufacturer's website it would seem that the Yellow would be adequate. Is the red actually better? Or just suited for different applications?

They are just for different applications really. In my opinion, the red top is a great battery for dependable every day high CCA starting duties. It is strong and would be better than OEM for dealing with current draw from running your stereo wothout the engine running. It is great for an average X5 owner. The yellow top is more suited for heavy duty current draw and many cycles of deep discharging/charging, it has loads of reserve time. It is also great for dual or triple battery setups for guys that have gigantic AV systems. So yellow would play longer at a camp site before it discharged. The blue tops are sort of a combination of the red and yellow so I have heard, i.e. they have the long reserve of yellow deep cycle bat's and maintain higher CCA like red top's. I think you would be fine with yellow or red. Yellow is what you see in most big audio setup's if that matters.

In summary (a quote I found in google)
Red-starting batteries, hich cca, lower reserve minute.

Yellow-popular "car audio" battery, longer reserve minutes, little less cca.

Blue-longer resrve minute(comparable to yellow top) and higher CCA (compared to red tops), best of both worlds.

Got myself and Optima Red yesterday... haven't had any further problems thus far.

Red - 36 month warranty
Yellow - 12 month warranty

Red - $180
Yellow - $210

I decided to go with the red just for the fact that it's cheaper and has a longer warranty. The yellow might have been slightly better suited for what I'm looking to do, but the warranty thing got me... just can't bring myself to pay more for something that's not as reliable.

I still have an engine noise problem though... guess I'll just have to drown it out with the stereo all the way to seattle today. I'll probably stop at a local place here and pick up an RCA filter to see if that will dampen it some, and maybe do some re-routing of my RCA's when I get back.

Good. Optima Red is a super reliable battery.

Smooth trip... :thumbup:

Vandal -

U can try a couple different things on getting rid of the noise...
Float the ground on the RCA
Ground the shield on the HU

I'm a little late to this post but I fitted a Odysset 1700MJT as a replacement in mine.

Vandal I had my Diamond amps stuffed between the spare wheel and the rear floor deck. A second floor was built to sit on the spare and the amps were secured to this "new" floor which I can lift if I need to get to the spare.

Alright, well I thought my optima red had solved all my problems. Road trip went without a hitch. Been driving to work every day this week. Then this morning I get up and my battery's dead again. No lights on, no doors open.

Without buying an expensive DC amp probe, and ideas how to diagnose where this is coming from?