Have you ever gotten into your car, gone to start it, and… nothing?
It always seems to happen when we have somewhere to be and we’re already late. Maybe you left your lights on or a door open just a smidge so the interior light stayed on, or maybe it was just so stinkin’ cold that your battery just couldn’t take it.
It’s normally not a huge problem as long as you have some jumper cables and another car that WILL start nearby. If you’ve never jump started your car and you don’t know who to ask, we are here for you and can help you figure it out and get on with your day.
Follow these steps to get your battery working again:
- STEP 1: You need a donor car.
- STEP 2: You need booster cables. The red cables are positive and the black ones are negative – you need both. Pull the donor car up nice and close to the dead car, park, pop the hood, and find the battery. Pop the hood on the dead car.
- STEP 3: You need to connect the positive red clamp to the dead car’s positive post.
- STEP 4: Then, take the other end of the cable and connect the clamp to the donor car’s positive post. Follow these steps again with the black cable clamps and the negative posts.
- STEP 5: Start the donor car, then, attempt to start the dead vehicle, it may take a few minutes of having the cars connected before the dead car will start.
- STEP 6: Once the dead car starts, disconnect the cables, but working in reverse of how you connected them: disconnect the black cable from the dead car, then the donor car, then disconnect the red from the donor car, then from the dead car.
