How to Jumpstart a Vehicle

Nothing

is worse than having a dead battery on your vehicle, leaving a person stuck with no transportation, and probably making you late to wherever you were going. This guide will help get your vehicle going if you have the right resources handy. There is two methods to jumpstarting a vehicle, using a charger or jumper cables. All the different methods involve different steps and safety precautions that have to be taken.

When using another vehicle and jumper cables, first thing that should be done is to make sure when one side of the jumper cables are hooked up is that the clamps on the other side DO NOT touch one another. If the clamps do touch one another there will be a large shower of sparks and could cause harm to yourself or the vehicle.

Second thing that needs to be watched is that the positive clamps (red) are hooked up to the positive post and the negative clamp (black) are hooked on the negative post. Then when both sides of the jumper cables are hooked up to the post on the batteries, the vehicle with the dead battery should start right up.

The next method would be using a portable charger. First thing to do is get the charger near the battery on the vehicle and hook up the battery cable clamps, Positive clamp(red) to positive post and negative(black) to negative post like before with the jumper cables.

Then plug the battery charge into the power source, it could be an outlet on the wall or a generator, depending on the circumstances. Thirdly would be to turn the charger on, some chargers have a setting that is made for jumpstarting while other just trickle charge the battery. If the charger being used has the jumpstart option then select that option.

In conclusion if the vehicle doesn’t want to start right of way, give it a couple of minutes or so without trying to start it. Then after that period of time, try starting it and 9 times out of 10 it will start. After a few minutes if the vehicle doesn’t start check your battery connections to see if that is the problem. In the end if the vehicle doesn’t start a new battery is probably the solution to your problem.