How to Jump Start Your Car

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Nothing is more inconvenient than trying to start your car and getting no response. The most common culprit is a dead battery. Your battery can get drained if you leave one of your electronic components on overnight. Most of the time when your battery is drained all you need to do is jump-start it and drive it around for a little while, and the alternator will charge the battery. In some cases the battery will not hold charge anymore; in this situation you should purchase a new battery. It is recommended you always carry jumper cables in the trunk of your car. Even if you never need to use them, you may run into someone else who does.

Jumping a vehicle is a simple process that only requires a helping car. Before asking people for help, ensure that the battery is the problem. When you go to start your ignition, if you hear clicking noises but the car isn’t cranking, it means your battery is dead. The clicking noise is your starter trying to crank the engine, but your engine is not getting any juice from the battery. If your battery is the problem, read on to learn how to jump-start it.

Tools Required:

Jumper cable
Another working car

Before trying to connect your jumper cables, it is important to align the car you will be jumping your car with properly. Park the car where both batteries are close to one another and make sure the jumper cable can reach bother cars’ batteries.

With the engines off:

Connect the positive (red) cable to the dead car’s positive battery terminal.
Connect the other side of the positive cable to the positive battery terminal on the working car.
Connect the negative (black) cable to the working car.
Connect the other side of the negative cable to anything metal in the car. You can connect it to the negative battery terminal, but it’s safer to do it on something with bare metal.

Start the working car’s engine, and then let it run and charge for two to three minutes. Start the dead car’s engine. If it doesn’t start, then let it charge for a few minutes longer and then try again.

Remove the negative cables from both cars first, and then remove the positive cables to avoid the red and black cables from teaching each other and creating a spark.