A1 Car Removals

Jump-Starting Your Vehicle Safely

Most car owners must have been in a situation where their car simply gives out, in the middle of the road, or probably while starting from home. This sounds vague but we’re talking about that annoying moment when the battery stutters, croaks, groans and simply refuses to start. This means that your car has run out of juice to start the car and unless you want to make that long trip to the nearest service centre to get it fixed, we suggest that you take matters into your own hands. All you need is a pair of jumper cables and a car with a working battery.

First off, you should ensure that the jumper cables you’ve bought are in safe working condition. There shouldn’t be any exposed wire, the rubber coating should not have any cracks and the cable clamps must be clean. You should also have a decent length of jumper cables so as to connect the dead battery in your car with the one in the other car. You can easily buy a battery terminal brush to keep the terminals of the battery clean at all time.

Melbourne has many good hardware stores that sell jumper cables at a decent rate. It’s really a saving since you won’t have to lug about to a repair centre and shell out all that cash for getting your car juiced up. Neither will you have to call up a car removal company to get your ride towed to the repair garage; another cash-eater.

So, back to the do-it-yourself on jump-starting your car. Make sure that your vehicles are parked close to each other, turn them both off and put them in neutral. Set their parking brakes for good measure and then pop the hoods on both of them.

Jump-starting a car is much easier than it sounds. You have two connecter cables; one is red and the other is black. The red connector is positive and the black is negative. Following the colour signal, connect the red clamps on both ends and make sure that while you’re doing so, the other clamp does not dangle onto the engine area.

If you have a friend working in a service centre or a car removal company, you could also ask him/her for help. The basic steps are as follows:

·         1. Connect the red clamp to the positive terminal of the car with the dead battery

·         2. Connect the other red clamp to the positive terminal of the car with the working battery

·         3. Connect the black clamp to the negative terminal of the car with the working battery

·         4. Connect the other black clamp to any unpainted metal surface in the engine compartment of the car with the dead battery. It could be a bolt or even a crossbar; the black clamp is used to ground the connection.

Once you’ve firmly secured the clamps to their designated area, start the car with the working battery. If the battery on the dead car has been that way for a long time, you might have to let the booster car idle a bit while the battery wakes up.

Now, start the dead car. It should probably start right away but if it doesn’t, do not try again for a few minutes. If it doesn’t start up even after three or four tries, do not try starting it again. You might end up damaging the battery with continued attempts.

In case you don’t have a car available to do the job, you can always phone a towing car service or a car removal company to do the job for you. They will arrive as soon as possible and have your car up and ready. Of course, this will take cash, unless you have a repair card or are a client of the company for such situations. Melbourne has plenty of car removal companies  so it won’t take them long to reach you.

Once your dead car has been resurrected, leave it running and disconnect the cables in exactly the reverse order as you connected them in the first place. This means that you disconnect the ground connection of the dead car first, and then disconnect the negative terminal on the working battery. Then, you disconnect the positive terminal on the working battery, followed by that on the dead vehicle.

One thing you should keep in mind at all times is that you’re dealing with live cables with running electricity. Only touch the cables where it is safe; this means the cable handles. With any luck, you have now jump-started your vehicle successfully and can thank your friend with the good car. You might have to jump start the car again the next time you start it, but driving around for a good 10-15 minutes will give it enough juice to be back on its feet.