Battery OPTIMA or Varta
Agreed with others, weigh your usage and environment/climate into the equation. We will personally be replacing ours with a deep discharge battery like the Optima Yellow, since I've noticed that of recent we've been running a lot quick errands that involve one person running in while everyone else hangs out in the car with A/C on.
I had an OEM VW battery made by Varta. It lasted from October 2005 to May 2014. It spent time in Michigan, Minnesota and northern Germany. I never had any problems with it.
The OEM battery is probably the best bang for the buck. I replaced mine with another OEM one after 7 years as a preventive measure. It was still performing fine.
Agree with everybody on here, change your battery - I had similar problems and others not mentioned, changed the battery and almost all problems disappeared.
I bought a red top used off craigslist over 3years ago and it's still great.
A few months ago I replaced the autozone battery with an optima red top. I've left the lights on twice for over half the day and the car still started right up. I'm really impressed with how strong the red top cranks.
I use Red top Optima batteries in all my cars, I truly hate flooded lead acid batteries as they will leak at sometime in their life.
So I've been looking to replace the stock battery doesn't seem to hold a charge as well as before. Always wanted to put an Optima Yellow Top in it
Optima batteries have been objectively awful for years. Don't buy them.
Optima batteries are not as good as they first were. Optima batteries have gone down in quality after being bought out, after Johnson Controls bought them and moved production to Mexico.
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