Hey, today I was talking to Marlin about this and he informed me that he's been running his winches (warn upright 8274 for 10+ years, a now a warn 9500ti) for many years from the side posts of his red top optima and has had no problems.
And Marlin was handed the nick name of "Mr. Panamint" and lead each run up surpise canyon before they closed it down (damn enviros). He's winched up those 7 water falls every year since '92 I believe (yes, before the Crawler was invented). And he would go multiple times each year. And while winching up waterfalls may not be as much of a load as pulling out of mud holes, his side posts did get their share of extensive amperage throughput without any problems at all.
Maybe during a certain time period the optima batteries were under-engineered/developed?
