Many times we do forget to turn off the car headlights while parking. As a result, the car battery gets drained, and the car suddenly comes to a stop while driving. For restarting the car, we need to jump start it.
Jump starting is the procedure of restarting an already drained battery of the car by making a temporary connection between the battery to be jump started and the external source. The external source may be any other vehicle or may be from the additional battery available in the jump starter kit.
If you do not carry a jump starter kit with you, you must keep a jumper cable or jump leads with you such that you can take help on the road from other vehicles in case your vehicle battery gets drained.
If the vehicle has a functioning battery recharge system, right after jump start, the battery will be able to charge up itself and then, the external power supply can be disconnected as the vehicle is able to move on its own. Let us discuss how to use a jump starter in case of a car emergency.
Steps for using a jump starter during emergency
- First of all, turn off the ignition of the car which is to be jump started.
- Connect the jumper cable to the car battery with the help of crocodile clips. Connect the red coloured clip to the positive terminal of the battery and the black one to the negative terminal of the battery, which is discharged. In some cars, the positive and negative terminals may be located at some other point. Read from the user’s manual carefully before making the connections. For negative ground systems, you have to connect the negative terminal to any other non- moving metal part of the car.
- Make sure that the connecting cable is not coming in of any of the moving objects of the car, like any of the internal moving parts.
- Now start the car by turning on the ignition.
- If the car does not start within six seconds, let the jump starter cool down for three minutes before trying to start the car for the next time or the jump starter will be damaged.
- After it is jump started, disconnect the negative terminal first i.e., the red one and return it back to its holster.
- Then disconnect the positive terminal, i.e., the red one and keep it back to its holster.
Precautions while using a jump starter
- You should not connect the terminals of jump starter cables to points with different voltage rating on two sides. Like you should never connect a six volt terminal with a twelve volt terminal. It may cause the battery to blast.
- You should never charge a frozen or physically damaged battery with a low electrolyte level as those batteries will not be repaired, and they may also explode.
- You must read the user’s manual from the manufacturer carefully before using the jump starter because if anything is wrongly connected; there will be a lot of damage.
