Watch Where You Jump – Dead Car Batteries
June 28, 2008 Automotive Consumer, General Interest, How To Auto Repair, jump-n-carry 5 Comments
Recently my brother had a dead battery, so I took my jump box to his house to jump start his car. It’s funny how some things are second nature when you’ve done it a thousand times. He had already tried using his new bargain booster box that he had just bought at a local parts store. The less expensive jump boxes usually only have continuity on one jaw of the cable clamp. The better quality jump boxes, like the JNC4000 or JNC 660 have power on both sides of the jaws. When there is power on both sides of the jumper clamps it makes it much easier to get a good connection when jump starting a car. Anyways, my brother properly attached the red battery jumper clamp, from my jump box to the positive side of the battery first. And he knew not to clamp the black jumper lead (from the booster box) directly to the battery’s negative terminal, because a small spark from connecting it there could ignite the vapors from the car battery and cause it to explode. But he made the mistake of hooking the black negative cable from the jump box to a bolt that held a small ground cable to the body of the car. This can force the small gauge body ground straps to carry excessive amps and possibly cause a melt down.

It’s always better to find a good size bolt head on the engine to connect the negative jumper cable to. For more detailed instructions and warnings see Jump-n-Carry’s pdf instruction manual. A foot note, my brother now knows the right way to jump start his car….and not to leave the dome light on all night.
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