Battery is one of many important parts of our car. We won’t be able to turn on the headlights, use the air conditioning, listen to the stereo, let alone start the car. Unfortunately, little mistakes like turning the cabin lights on when the engine is switched off can drain the power of our battery. Luckily, dealing with a dead battery is one of the easiest we can do. However, before jumping to conclusions, we need to really make sure that we have a dead battery and it’s not caused by something else. It doesn’t make sense to waste energy and time with jumper cables, if our battery is working perfectly.
To make sure that the problem is the battery, we should try to turn the lights on or turn on the stereo after we put the key on the 2nd position. Our battery is probably fine if our engine cranks but it won’t start, however, we need help from the mechanic to see what’s wrong. However, if we are really sure that we have a dead battery, then we should get the necessary tools. Jumper cables are not enough, other things that need is another car with perfectly working battery. We need to make sure that these cables are not cracked or broken to make sure that we can get the power flows smoothly into our battery. If possible, we should also use glasses and gloves for safety reasons.
Before we start doing this, both cars should be parked with one another with only one foot of gap between bumpers. We need to make sure that fan, heater, air conditioning, lights, stereo and others are turned off on the car with good battery. Parking brakes should be set firmly, manual cars in neutral and automatic cars in park. Check the locations of batteries on both cars and unwind the jumper cables. We should make sure that they aren’t tangled. The black and red ends must not in contact with one another to avoid short-circuiting the whole system. The car with the good battery should be running.
Locate positive and negative terminals on both batteries. Red cables should be designated as the positive cables, while black cables as negatives. We could start by clamping the red cable on the positive terminal of the good battery with the positive terminal of the dead battery. We should also do the same with negative terminals on both batteries, but with the black cables. The next step is to slightly rev the engine of the running car for a couple of minutes, this will let some amount of juice flowing to dead battery, making it easy to charge the dead battery.
It’s the moment of truth, it’s the time to switch on the car with the dead battery. It may not work for the first or second time, but we need to keep on trying. However, if the car refuses to start after the tenth attempt, then we should wait five more minutes before we try it again. When it doesn’t work completely, then we may need to replace the battery with a new one.
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