Tips For Jump Starting A Vehicle

Did you accidentally leave your headlights on and cause your battery to drain until it was empty? If so, you are going to need to jump-start your vehicle to get it running again. Here are a few tips for doing it on your own.

Find A Working Vehicle

The first thing you are going to have to do is find a person that has a working vehicle that you can borrow. It can be any vehicle as well, as long as it is not an electric vehicle without an engine. You'll need your friend to pull up to your vehicle so that the hoods are facing or close to each other, but the vehicles are not touching. 

Locate The Battery And Terminal Leads

Pop the hoods and take a look at the batteries. You want to identify the positive and negative battery terminals. There may be a plus and minus sign on the battery itself, or they are identified by a black cable going to the negative terminal and a red cable going to the positive terminal.

Connect Your Jumper Cables 

You do not want your jumper cable ends to touch each other. Start by connecting the red jumper cable to the positive terminal on the dead battery. Then connect the red cable to the positive terminal of the working battery. The black cable can attach to the negative terminal of the good battery, followed by the black cable to a metal grounding point on the vehicle that's not working. Check your owner's manual to learn where a proper grounding point might be located.

Start The Engine On The Working Vehicle

The next step is to turn on the vehicle with the working battery and let the vehicle run for a couple of minutes. This is going to charge the dead battery of the opposite vehicle, and give it enough power for it to work. Then you can start the vehicle with the dead battery like normal. Hopefully, the vehicle should start. 

Disconnect The Jumper Cables

You can now remove the jumper cables. The order is very important to avoid sparks. Remove the black cable on the grounding point of the vehicle with the dead battery, then the red cable on the positive terminal of the good battery. Then the red cable of the dead battery can be removed, followed by the black cable to the negative terminal of the good battery. 

With these tips in mind, you should be able to successfully perform a vehicle jump-start on your vehicle.