Jumpstarting a Dead Battery

First of all let’s start off by wishing you all a Happy New Year! 2015 will be a great year for all of us, and we hope that everyones 2015 is filled with purpose, drive and great health.

With all of the extreme cold weather that we have been having here, we have had a lot of customers ask us how to jumpstart their cars from another car. Some of us are lucky to have a battery booster pack, and some of us are lucky enough to have a second car around. In both cases this blog will be helpful to you if you have a dead battery because you left something on overnight. For those of of you that don’t have a second car around, or a booster pack, well you are just going to have to schmooze your way to a nice neighbour to help you out, but this blog will still help in knowing the correct way to connect the dead and good batteries together. Not doing it correctly could actually cause harm to your vehicle or worse, cause an accident that could put your safety in danger.

So you’ve got yourself a dead battery, and you’ve either got a working car (and cables) or a booster pack, so now what?

Step 1 - attach the red cable to the DEAD battery. Remember RED to DEAD.

Step 2 - connect the other red cable end to the good battery.

Step 3 - connect the black cable on the good battery.

Step 4 - connect the last red cable to the dead battery or a part that is metal on the dead car’s frame.

Always take safety precautions and watch those cables. Never let them touch you, themselves or anything at all. That’s why you always need 2 people.

We posted a great picture above to help you remember the procedure with a visual. But if all else fails, just remember RED to DEAD and then RED to GOOD and then BLACK to GOOD and then BLACK to DEAD. Easy right?

If your battery died because you left something on, then you should be good once you let your car run/drive for an hour. However, if nothing was left on it could mean a bad battery or a bad alternator. In either case, you may not be able to start your car after you turn it off the next time. So if you are unsure, once you start it up, drive it down to us here at Top Gear and our specialists will let you know.

As always drive safe and in this months case, stay warm!