Connecting Jumper Cables to a Running Car

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Mark Blocker on behalf of Expert Village. We'll now show you how to connect the vehicles. First we always want to connect the vehicle that you're starting, that you're jump starting from. So the vehicle that you're getting a jump from, you want to connect from that one first. And always connect your negative first, then your positive. At this point, these jumper cables are going to be live. So you want to make sure that they don't touch each other at any time cause this can cause a spark. So what I commonly do is connect one to the other one and this prevents it to from coming in contact with each other while I'm setting up my jumper cables. Now the jumper cables, you want to have the best quality possible, preferably 4 gage, very thick wire, and get them as long as you possibly can cause quite often you can't get your vehicles very close. Longer cables will give you a better opportunity to give a quick easy jump without a whole lot of problems getting the vehicles together. Watch the next segment on connecting the cables to the dead vehicle or the vehicle needing to be jumped."