How to Jump-Start a Car

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Tom Brintzenhofe, Certified Master Mechanic, from Reading, Pennsylvania. Today, I'm going to talk to you about how to jump start your vehicle. First, I want to talk a little bit about safety. Any time you're working around batteries, you might want to either put your sunglasses on, so if it's not too dark, you can actually see, but something that's going to protect your eyes. First thing you want to look for, is a pair of jumper cables. Make sure your ends, you've got a positive and a negative. Negative is always black, positive is always red. Make sure everything on the inside, is nice and clean, not corroded. Your brass terminals on the inside, aren't painted over, that can wreak you a little havoc, here, so we're going to pretend right now, that this battery I have sitting here, is going to be the opposite car. You're going to take your jumper cables, separate the two, for the vehicle that's being jumped. The vehicle that you're jumping off of, you want to hook your battery up. Always pay attention to the markings on your battery. You've got negative, positive. Positive is typically always red, but you get somebody in there that's not paying attention to what he's doing, he might have a different color, a positive battery cable, or an alternative color, negative battery cable, but always look at the markings on your battery. Black is negative, hook your negative battery up. Red is positive, hook your positive battery cable up. Careful, do not touch these two, once you're hooked up to the other vehicle. It will be like the Fourth of July on your hands, and it's not pretty. Positive battery cable, hook this one up first, right on the battery post, positive battery post. A second terminal, it's not recommended you go directly to the battery, for your negative. You go right on, somewhere, nice, clean ground, roughly a bracket somewhere, away from your fan belt, anywhere on the engine, that's nice and clean, you've got a metal base. Hook yourself up. This one is going to give me a hard time here. There we go, well, maybe not. There we go. Now, you're ready to start your vehicle. Go ahead and hit your key. If it still gives you a hard time, you may have to start the other vehicle. Get it going a little bit, a little faster. Bring it up to maybe 2000 RPMs, get that one charging good. Let your vehicle that you're jump starting, sit for a couple of minutes, maybe one or two. Let the battery charge a little bit. Go ahead and fire it up. Once you get it all fired up, you want to move your negative battery terminal first, on the car that's being jumped. You pause the battery terminal. Again, don't touch them. Hold them apart. In fact, let one hang a little bit lower than the other. Disconnect your other negative battery terminal. It's kind of tricky holding them all together, but you don't want to touch them, and again, your positive, and you're good to go. That's all the much to it, but a good thing to have handy, in the trunk of your car."