Interstate batteries are made by the same company/plant and way as autozone, and walmart batteries.

Bought my 04' SR-5 V6 in Sept. of 03'. Of the 60 sumthin vehicles I've owned in my life THIS is the best built, BY FAR, of ANY of them. I have 26K miles on the WHITE rig and it has the original OEM BTTY! I've never spent a dime on it other than oil and filter changes evry 5k mi.! I DID remove the roof rack first thing after I bought it! I retired as a travelin industrial equipment slsman 25 years ago and obviously "had my fill" of travel! Considered a LS before buying this rig but couldnt justify letting $65K "rot & depreciate" in my garage. That LS demo was the MOST IMPRESSIVE vehicle I ever test drove! The ONLY thing lacking in my rig is the RIDE of that LS, but all things considered, I made the right decision. I did replace the 5 orig. BRIDGESTONES recently with B.F. GOODRICH (MICHELINS), $180 apiece, "out the door" from DISCOUNT TIRE.

Now, back to the OEM PANASONIC BTTY. I added some distilled water to it for the FIRST time a couple weeks ago and it still indicates "charging necessary". Even though the rig is garaged 99% of the time, I do live here in the desert of LAS VEGAS, NEVADA. We have 9 months of NICE weather here and 3 months of "BLAZING HOT" so its like an oven in my garage in summer. My question is; Should I simply hook up my charger to the btty. overnite and chek it the next morning or just go ahead and replace the btty.? I have had no problems at all (yet) with the rig startin up but am gittin a bit NERVOUS. I was surprized by the difference between the dealer and INTERSTATE price! I cant imagine getting any better battery than this OEM PANASONIC. The average life of a btty. here is about 3 years. My previous "ride" was a GMC SIERRA and I had to replace that btty. a year and a half after I bought it new.

Doesn't matter if its a Panasonic from Toyota or a Costco battery, if its in the $100 range it's a remanned battery. A NEW Panasonic battery is going to be in the $500 range.

I am posting a follow up after looking through the series of replacement battery messages last night. My factory OEM Panasonic battery (for 2004 4runner purchased in Aug. 05) for the first time was unable to crank and start up last night.

The first indication was that I pressed the remote "unlock" button and nothing happened.. I thought that the remote's battery ran out, and grabbed 2nd keyfob, and pressed, nothing happened... That old girl was so drained down, there was absolutely no power left it seems (opened door, no lights), no security red LED blinker flash on dash.

I can not place the blame on the battery, because I don't run my 4runner that often (last time I drove it was right before St. Patrick's day (3/17'ish)), and she only has maybe 25.4K miles on it. I had the red eye and the white surrounds (which indicates needs charging). I gave the battery a good charge over 6-7 hours, and even though I'm still seeing the red/white indicator, I gave her a good turn of the key, and she turned over, enough to start the V-8 running.

Knowing that I might only had one chance to start the V8 with the charging, I looked around for a good battery, and this morning called the toyota dealer, and they wanted I think $110 (before the $15 discount coupon which brought the price down to $95 + Tax + $15 Core fee.

I was able to search a bit last night and found an Autocraft 27F battery (see attached picture) with a $40 off coupon code that brought the out the door cost to about $98 (including the $15 core fee).

I'm attaching this picture because it seems to have good CCA 885A @ 32F / CCA 710A at 0F and reserve of 165, which seems to be excellent considering I paid way less than $100 (going to get another $15 back after core return bringing down price to $84.

Coupon code to try: DOW21 or A124 (A124 gave me $40 off)

AutoCraft Gold Battery, Group Size 27, 710 CCA-27F-1 - Advance Auto Parts

Hope this is helpful for others as well looking for a high CCA & a nice reserve without paying an arm and a leg.

Pengy

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Toyota dealer sells Tru-Start, original replacement. My 96 Camry is on its second Toyota battery. At 18 years old / 2 batteries = 9 years / battery. The cold January caused me to replace my 2005 Tundra battery today. It was still on the original Tru-Start, 9 years old. Called Interstate, Sears, and Toyota Dealer. Toyota was $5 less. So lowest cost, 9 year average life in upstate NY, fits perfectly. Very suprised that dealer had the lowest cost too!

I bought mine at walmart and have no compliants, been 3 years now.

I'm suspecting dealer replace battery before sell the car to me

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