Jumping A Car – Imagine this: you came home from dinner after a long day at work. You park your car in the driveway and get ready for bed. You get a good night’s sleep. You wake up and take your time getting ready. Get into your car to head to work. But wait, your car will not turn on. You keep trying, still nothing. You give it a few minutes before trying again. And still nothing. You then remember that you left your lights on and your battery has now died. What now?? Now you need to start the process of jumping a car.
Here is a step by step process of jumping a car:
- Find jumper cables. You can not even think about jumping a car without these.
- Find a kind person to help you. Takes two to tango AND when it comes to jumping a car.
- Once someone is willing to help jump your car, both cars need to be turned off and in neutral or park.
Jumping a car is fast and easy but please remember to NOT let the clips touch each other, especially when connected.
The next few steps to jumping your car have to do with the physical battery so let’s go over a couple of things before going forward. Your battery has a negative and positive terminal. Do not jump any battery that has visible damage or is corroded.
- Connect the red jumper clip to the positive terminal on your car battery and then connect the other red clip to the positive terminal of the good battery.
- Connect the black jumper clip to the negative terminal on the good battery
- Here is the tricky part of jumping a car. You will NOT be connecting the black clip to the negative of your car. But instead, you will be connecting it to an unpainted, metal piece of the car in need of a jump.
- Now you are going to start the car with the working battery. Let it run for about a minute before trying to turn on the car with the bad battery.
- Time to start the car with the dead battery. If it still will not turn on, let is keep charging a while longer. You can try revving the engine a bit to give it a little extra pushing power.
- Once the dead battery is charged, disconnect the black cables first, then the red.
Again, please be sure to not let the jumper cables touch each other while they are still connected to any part of the battery or car! Jumping a car takes a lot of power and electricity and we don’t want anyone getting hurt.
- Be sure to leave the car running for a bit before turning it off again. Take a nice drive or just leave it in your driveway.
And you are all done. You were successful at jumping a car and can now go about your day and will be prepared for next time.