There is a wide variety of reasons that your car may not start, but one of the most common is that your battery has died. Car batteries die for a handful of reasons including aging and overuse. Leaving electronically powered devices on while your car is not running absorbs electricity from your car’s battery, draining it and causing it to die. Luckily, there is a simple solution to this problem – jump starting your car.
Jump starting your car is a fast and simple process that can help you get back on the road in virtually no time at all. All you need is a set of jumper cables or a portable jump starter pack. Of course, keeping a portable jump starter is a great way to be prepared for a battery to die. However, you can also jump start your car by connecting your dead battery to a live one in a running car.
The following quick and easy steps for jump starting your car can help anyone get their car running again.
- Position both vehicles so they face one another, grill to grill.
- Cars with manual transmissions should be placed in neutral and cars with automatic transmissions should be placed in park.
- Turn running vehicle off.
- Attach the positive cable to the postive battery terminal, do the same for the negative cable and battery terminal.
- Attach the other end of the cables to the live battery.
- Start the car with the live batttery and run it for a few minutes. Rev the engine briefly a couple of times.
- Start the car with the dead battery.
- Remove cables and store them in your car’s trunk.