Battery Charger: Keep you battery fresh with this helpful guide for maintaining or charging any automotive battery.

How To Jump Start A Car

The three biggest causes of dead car batteries are: 1) Leaving your lights on. 2) Not maintaining your battery properly with the correct water levels (typically for older maintenance batteries).  3) Breakdown of the diode bridge or voltage regulator in your alternator. However, it is possibility that you have a bad starter, but the chances of that are low compared to the other reasons of dead car batteries.

Jump Starting A Dead Car Battery: A Few Precautions

1. Line both cars up so the batteries are as close as can be. Make sure the cars are in park, and both cars ignitions are turned off, but not touching each other before you connect the cables. Make sure all accessories such as; headlights, blinkers, car radios and A/C's are off, radar detectors are unplugged, cell phones unplugged, everything off. Unplug all accessories from cigarette lighters and other power sockets from both cars. Jump starting a battery can crank 300+ volts through your system and the accessories can be destroyed.

Find the Positive (+) and Negative (-) terminals of both car batteries so you know exactly which one is which. All batteries should be clearly marked.  Wipe off any battery acid that may have leaked.

2. If the battery is cracked and liquid is leaking out, DO NOT go further! Buy another battery and swap it out. If you try to jump start a battery with a crack in it, it will explode, and battery acid will destroy your clothes and severely burn your body.

3. Try to clean off any corrosion around the dead battery terminals, and if you have tools, loosen the wires from the terminals, clean them off, then retighten the wires to the shiny posts. Corroded posts prevent the power from getting through the cables and into your battery to revive it. If you have a file handy, try to file the metal battery posts until they are shiny. In a pinch use pliers to clamp down and scrape off corrosion too as the metal is somewhat soft.

4. Usually the positive battery cable is red or orange, and usually the Negative (-) or ground cable is black, but always check for yourself to be sure.

Connecting The Car Battery Jumper Cables

The cables must be connected in this exact order listed below, 4 easy steps. Wear protective eyewear!

STEP 1: Connect one end of the Positive(+) cable to the Positive(+) post of the DEAD battery.

STEP 2: Connect the other end of the Positive(+) cable to the Positive(+) post of the good battery.

STEP 3: Connect one end of the Negative(-) cable to the Negative(-) post of the good battery.

STEP 4: Connect the other end of the Negative(-) cable to a good solid, NON PAINTED metal part of the engine on the dead car. Usually a giant nut on the engine block will do. A painted, dirty, or oily nut will not work. You usually want to avoid placing the Negative(-) cable directly on the dead battery to minimize the chance for explosions. You should only use the ground post on the dead battery as a last resort. It is normal to get a spark as you connect the ground and complete the circuit.

Why do the battery charger cables have to be connected in this order?
The reason why you connect the battery cables to the dead car battery first is you have 3 metal cable ends dangling and potentially touching metal car parts, so a dead battery is less likely to cause any sparking, since it has little or no voltage. This is the safest starting point for your jumper cables. The second battery cable clamp goes to the positive end of the good battery instead to minimize completing any circuits until we are ready to. Then the third end of the battery cable goes to the ground of the good battery. It will still have not completed the circuit yet, until the fourth battery cable clamp is attached to ground. This is why this order of attaching the battery cables to your car batteries is the safest way to do it. It minimizes unnecessary sparking until the charging circuit is completed. This is good practice because excessive and unnecessary sparking could cause car batteries to fail or explode.

Since the bad battery is weak, and to prevent exploding, it's ground clamp gets connected last, but not directly to the ground battery post. To prevent sparking directly on the battery, you connect the fourth battery cable clamp to a metal frame part of the dead car, which is connected to the minus pole of the battery. Many people are easily confused by this step. They cannot figure out how this completes the circuit to the battery. Car batteries have their ground cable also wired to the chassis of the car, so by clamping to a good metal chassis point, this is electrically equivalent to connecting to the ground post of your car battery.

Removing the jumper cables
Now that your dead car has been successfully jump started, you can remove the cables in the reverse order that you connected them being careful not to let the battery cable clamps from touching each other or the will arc or spark.