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Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
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Sorry if I missed it and am repeating but there's a sequence to be followed for connecting/disconnecting jumper cables:
With engine off
1) Red cable to dead battery's + terminal
2) Other end to booster battery's + terminal
3) Black cable to booster battery's - terminal
4) Other end to a bare metal ground on dead vehicle
Start booster vehicle and after a few minutes start dead vehicle
5) Disconnect black cable from dead vehicle's ground
6) Disconnect other end from booster battery's - terminal
7) Disconnect red cable from booster battery's + terminal
8) Disconnect other end from dead battery's + terminal
Having a friend, an experienced mechanic, who lost an eye to an exploding battery years ago, I don't take working with batteries lightly.
Sorry if I missed it and am repeating but there's a sequence to be followed for connecting/disconnecting jumper cables:
With engine off
1) Red cable to dead battery's + terminal
2) Other end to booster battery's + terminal
3) Black cable to booster battery's - terminal
4) Other end to a bare metal ground on dead vehicle
Start booster vehicle and after a few minutes start dead vehicle
5) Disconnect black cable from dead vehicle's ground
6) Disconnect other end from booster battery's - terminal
7) Disconnect red cable from booster battery's + terminal
8) Disconnect other end from dead battery's + terminal
Having a friend, an experienced mechanic, who lost an eye to an exploding battery years ago, I don't take working with batteries lightly.
I jumped someone the other day who came up to me in a gas station lot and I could not find one single piece of metal to ground to. So much plastic under the hood!
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,327 posts, read 54,358,694 times
Reputation: 40731
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sherifftruman
I jumped someone the other day who came up to me in a gas station lot and I could not find one single piece of metal to ground to. So much plastic under the hood!
It's a whole new world under the hood, isn't it?
Even if you're forced to use the negative battery terminal of the dead battery the sequence is designed to minimize the possibility of generating a spark in the possibly hydrogen-rich vicinity of a battery.
Even if the possibility is remote, I've seen the aftermath of an exploding battery and can assure you any time taken to minimize the possibility is time well spent.
I guess I'm no longer the adrenaline junkie of my misspent youth.
Yeah, but if you have thin cables they are still capable of charging the battery of the other car. So waiting a few minutes with it revved a bit above idle might charge their battery enough that it does not draw much through the cables from your car when the high amperage loads are pulled by the starter.
Yeah, I get that part. What I'm not getting is that you actually seemed to be endorsing lower gauge cables, which is where you lost me.
Quote:
If the battery is still low, then when they go to start, much more amperage will want to flow through a thin high resistance cable.
No, increasing resistance decreases amperage. That's basic Ohm's law.
Yeah, I get that part. What I'm not getting is that you actually seemed to be endorsing lower gauge cables, which is where you lost me.
No, increasing resistance decreases amperage. That's basic Ohm's law.
No, not at all. More trying to warn people that if you have crappy cables, you NEED to let it charge for a while before trying to crank the car.
Quote:
Originally Posted by burdell
It's a whole new world under the hood, isn't it?
Even if you're forced to use the negative battery terminal of the dead battery the sequence is designed to minimize the possibility of generating a spark in the possibly hydrogen-rich vicinity of a battery.
Even if the possibility is remote, I've seen the aftermath of an exploding battery and can assure you any time taken to minimize the possibility is time well spent.
I guess I'm no longer the adrenaline junkie of my misspent youth.
I definitely know and am always careful, doing the connections the same way you stated since I was in high school messing with cars in the late 80s. In this particular incident, I definitely at least looked away when I closed the clamp just in case. Back in the day my younger brother was a mechanic for a while and he actually had a battery blow up on him. Luckily, just ruined some clothes.
We had some employees try to jump-start a vehicle with cheap cables purchased at Harbor Freight Tool company. They let the charging vechile run for almost an hour and it still did not charge enough to start. I connected with better cables and it started instantly. (My vehicle also has upgraded alternators. so it is producing more power to begin with) I took the cheap cables and gave the employee some better ones. We cut the cheap cables open and found thick insulation around wire that was no more than 14 gauge, probably 18 gauge. The wire itself was not pure copper. We did not determine what it is actually made of, but you could clearly see it is not pure copper (most likely copper mixed with Aluminum but it cold be anything). The terminal clamps also had very thin pieces of metal (copper and whatever mixed) that were badly soldered to the tiny wire. Looking at the solder connection, it was surprising any power would be transferred through that connection and not surprising to learn here that those cheap cables sometimes overheat and begin smoking.
Good quality heavy gauge, long cables with decent clamps cost over $100 per set, but the cost is well worth it if you consider the difference between being stranded for an hour or more (or indefinitely) and being on one's way again in a matter of seconds. This is particularly true since most battery failures seem to occur in bad weather and/or during nighttime.
I've found Sears to have decent cables with a minimum 4 gauge copper on sale at times...
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