Good news! My Park Avenue has decided to kill yet ANOTHER battery, probably the 6th battery in 9 years.

The first battery seemed to hang around for a fair while, before it properly died. It wouldn't pass enough current to even try to start, the same way most battery failures typically unfold.

I replaced it with a Duralast (DuraKrapp?) gold battery, and since then, it has been the same story repeatedly. The car starts to develop gremlins, causing me to wonder if the alternator is trying some funny business. The car still starts just fine. The battery tester declares battery bad. Nothing about low CCA or anything, just bad.

This time though, because of the way the last battery was replaced, it is now covered only by a mere $18 worth of warranty remaining by AutoZone, which, supposedly if I try to use it, will get washed out by an $18 Core charge that somehow gets forfeited when they do a warranty exchange or something to that effect. Even if that is not the case, I have no interest in saving $20 to throw another battery in destined to fail in 1-2 years.

I guess my question is, is this what I get for using Duralast, or could something be causing these failures that I need to try and track down? If it is a brand issue, should I be on the hunt for a specific brand or even perhaps different type of battery?

I'd start looking for what'* drawing your battery down so much. Though its not killing your battery overnight, its doing it over time.

I don't have any reason to suspect there is a draw however. The car starts up after a 3 day weekend like nothing. There was even one point where the car was parked for 6-8 weeks, and it still started up okay, although the battery was down to 11.5-11.8v when I put the car back in to service after that.

The only possibility I could think of would be an old worn out starter hitting the battery much harder than it should, but the car typically starts within a full engine revolution usually, and may take up to 5 revolutions if it is stone cold below 30*. It does sound like it cranks slower than my Regal, but not alarmingly so. Not so much so that you would think there is a problem.

Any other brand recommendations by chance? I may take the opportunity to bail from the DuraKrapp series to rule that out as a variable.

Diehard. Look around for AGM batteries. AGMs are built to better stand up to repeated draining and recharging cycles than standard batteries.

6 Batteries in 9 years? Your PA has some issues which you are missing or just trying to work around. I have used Duralast batteries for years and they are fine. Did you have the alternator load tested? Check for voltage drops on various circuits?