Disconnecting the Battery from the Alternator

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Nate McCullough on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip we are going to talk about the proper way to disconnect the vehicle's battery and why it is important. What you are going to want to do when you are disconnecting the vehicle's battery is disconnect the negative battery terminal. Just take a couple of turns, loosen it up and slide it off. The reason why you want to disconnect the vehicle's battery before servicing any electrical components on it. Some of the components are going to be hot all the time. In other words they are going to have electrical power running through them no matter if the engine is running or not. The alternator happens to be one of them. If you didn't disconnect the vehicle's battery and went to remove some of the components on the alternator and you struck your socket wrench from the alternator to ground, it may throw a pretty decent amount of sparks at you. It may also damage some wiring or possibly blow this main bus fuse. This main bus fuse is designed to boil if there is an art that occurs in the charging system. This is about a $14 fuse so to avoid it, you are going to want to unhook the vehicle's battery. "