How to Jump Start Your Car

Scott Elbertson: Hi, I am Scott from the Automotive Service Garage in Alexandria, Virginia and I am showing you how to maintenance your car's battery. Next, we are going to show you the proper way of jumpstarting your vehicle. Your battery is dead your car won't start; there are several different ways of getting it going. You can either use a booster pack which is available at most auto part stores or simply battery cables which is something that most people have in their cars. Now, it's important to remember, we always want to connect the car that has the dead battery first. In the case of these jumper cables it's a two piece design with an LED light on that will tell you that the terminals are connected properly.

So, first we will connect our positive then our negative. We have a red LED which tells me that I have done it correctly. Next, we are going to move to our donor car which has a good battery. I am going to connect the positive and then the negative. The way the design is for these battery cables, we can now connect it while standing away from both cars, both batteries. Now, that we have got a connection made on both we will start our donor car. You should allow it to run for a couple of minutes probably, five to put some juice back in or charge the dead battery. It will help you in starting that car. Now, that we have waited five minutes or so, we think we are ready to start this car. Always remember to firmly apply the brake, make sure the car is imparked before you attempt to start it. Now, that the car is started we are going to have to remove our cables. Now, we have got our car with a dead battery running. Now, there is a sequence again to removing the cables. We want to make sure that we don't arc. When we pull the battery cable off it will cause a spark. Again, the beauty of these battery cables, you can just connect it right here. Now, the two cars are separated, we will remove the positive cable then the negative and again, on the donor car the positive cable and then the negative. Make sure that we close back up our terminal access panels or anything like that that we have pulled apart. Always, remember to use caution when working around batteries. However, if you had regular jumper cables that didn't have the connection in the middle, the sequence would go like this. From the donor car you would first remove the negative cable and then the positive cable, making sure that you don't make any contact with them. Then you would go over to your jumpstarted car, remove the negative and then the positive cable, that way disconnecting both vehicles. Next, we are going to show you how to test your battery.