If you slide into the driver seat and are unable to get your vehicle started, Hightech Automotive advises that your battery may be dead. If the battery is older than three years old, it needs to be replaced. You may be able to get the engine started so you can drive to our shop if you jump-start the battery. Your owner’s manual has instructions on how to do this. If you don’t have the manual, here are general instructions.
Set Up the Cars
Find a good Samaritan who is willing to help you out. You are going to attach one side of the battery jumping cables to the good Samaritans battery to draw a charge from it. As the good Samaritan to park his or her vehicle in front of your car so the engines are facing each other. Leave enough working space between the vehicles for you to fit. Set the parking brakes on each car so they stay put.
Uncover the Batteries
With the engines currently off, pop the hoods and secure them so they stay open. Remove the battery covers over the batteries if either battery has one. Set the covers aside so they are out of the way. Check the batteries in both cars to make sure they are not corroded. If there is corrosion, clean it.
Connect the Jumper Cables
Stretch the jumper cables between the vehicles so you have a negative and positive clamp for each engine. Clamp one side of the positive cable to the source car’s positive battery terminal. Next, clamp the positive clamp to the dead battery. Clamp the negative clamp to the source car’s negative terminal. Clamp the other negative clamp to the negative terminal on the dead battery or onto a clean piece of metal. When we say clean, we mean that the metal is pure and not painted.
Fire Up the Engines
Start the engine of the car with the working battery first. Allow the engine to run for a brief moment before you start the engine of the car that has the dead battery. Hopefully, the car with the dead battery will start. If it does not, you have a problem aside from the battery.
Disconnect the Cables
If the dead battery does fire up the engine, leave the engine running and disconnect the jumper cables. Do this in the opposite order. In other words, remove the negative cables first and then the positive cables.
Head to Hightech Automotive in Forest City, NC, so we can test your battery and replace it if necessary.