What To When Your Car Battery is Dead?
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When the car battery is dead, you won’t be able to start your car. There are two common methods used to deal with this situation. The first is the bump method. It should be noted that the bump method will work only on manual transmission cars. You don’t need any tool and it is quick to do. Make sure the road is flat or if possible, it goes slightly downhill, so you can use the gravity to work for you. The general idea is to get the car rolling. Put the manual transmission at the 2nd gear. Quickly release and depress the clutch. This will bump the car and the engine will hopefully turn over. When the engine fires up, you need to immediately depress the clutch one again, so the engine won’t stall. When you do this, make sure that the road is clear.
The jump method is more effective, but you need two important things, another car with working battery and a couple of jump leads. Drive the working car, so batteries on both cars are located close to one another. Turn off the engine of the working car. Check the positive and negative terminals of both batteries. Make sure that you don’t make mistake in determining this. If you see white deposits or corrosion, you can use sandpaper to remove it. Then, you should use a rag to clean up the terminals, so you will work with only the metal elements. Connect the positive terminal of the working battery with the positive terminal of the dead battery. You should also do the same with the negative terminals of both batteries. Again, make sure that you don’t connect negative with positive, because you will end up causing spark.
You need to start by turning on the engine of the working car. Run it for a couple of minutes and push the accelerator pedal slightly. This will put some charge into the dead battery. The next step is to start the car with the dead battery. In this situation, the dead battery will draw a lot of power from the working battery. So, it is a good idea to keep pushing on the accelerator pedal slightly in the working car. If the dead car fails to start, you may need to wait for five more minutes, before starting again. Once the dead car can be turned on, you should release the jumper cables in the right order.
It means that you should release the negative terminal on the dead battery and then the negative terminal on the working battery. Then, you can release the positive terminal on the dead battery and then release the positive terminal at the other end. Make sure that the engine of the car with dead battery runs with good stability and you need to push the accelerator slightly to charge the dead battery. You need to drive the car for at least 15 to properly charge the dead battery. If your battery is dead again, then you should consider replacing it with the new one.
