After driving for more than 20+ years, I’ve never had to know how to boost my vehicle’s battery. Someone was always around to do it for me. Until this past winter.

Here are step-by-step instructions for how to boost your car’s battery. Feel free to print them out, put in a plastic sleeve and tuck into your car’s glove compartment.

You’ll need someone with a running vehicle to give your dead battery a boost plus a set of booster cables.

You can either turn off the running vehicle before applying booster cables, or leave it running. Your choice.

Admin Edit - Correction Made From the comments area below:

Connecting the black (ground) jumper cable (of dead negative grounded vehicles)to the sheet metal of the vehicle rather than the negative terminal of the dead battery is a very important safety feature. Batteries can and do emit gas and if you get a spark while connecting the cable to the negative terminal of the battery the close proximity to the gas can result in a battery exploding in your face. Generally, you only make this mistake once.

How To Boost A Car Battery

    1. Pull the running vehicle up close to the dead vehicle. This can either be side-by-side or hood to hood. Just make sure the vehicles are close enough for the booster cables to reach both vehicle batteries.

    2. Take out the booster cables and make sure to never touch the ends to each other at any time.

    3. First work with the running vehicle. Take one end of the battery cables and attach them to the battery which is usually up front near the corner of the car when the hood is popped up.

  • There are always two posts on a battery, one is positive and the other is negative. The positive post is usually bigger than the negative, has more wires going to it, is frequently colored red and has a + sign beside the post. *See Pictures Below
  • Working with the same end of the booster cable (one red clamp and one black clamp):
  • Clamp the red end of the booster cable to the positive post on the battery.
  • Next clamp the black end of the booster cable to the negative post.
  • Now you should have both clamps from one end of the booster cables attached to the battery of the ‘working’ vehicle.

Very Important: Make sure to NEVER let the clamps of the booster cables on the loose end to touch each other or you will have flury of sparks.

    4. Working with the ‘dead’ vehicle and the other end of the booster cables, follow the exact same procedure above. First attach the red positive clamp to the positive post, and the black negative clamp attach to a grounded piece of sheet metal of the vehicle (read comments below).

Important: Make sure to attach the red positive clamp first, then the black negative clamp

    5. Now both ends of the booster cables should be attached, one end to each vehicle. Red clamps attached to each positive post, and black clamps attached to the negative post on the running vehicle and the other negative clamp attached to a grounded metal part of the other vehicle.

    6. First turn on the ‘working’ vehicle giving you the boost. Then try starting the ‘dead battery’ vehicle. If it doesn’t start right away, you may need to let the running vehicle run for a minute or two to charge the dead vehicle, then try starting the dead vehicle again.

    7. If the dead vehicle still doesn’t start, make sure the clamps are on the battery posts properly and have not fallen off.

    8. Once the vehicle with the dead battery is running, do not shut the vehicle off. Keep it running so it recharges the battery.

    9. Remove the booster cables from one vehicle at a time.

Important: First remove the black negative clamp, then the red positive clamp

  • Hold the detached clamps in one hand away from the other end while removing the second booster cable end from the second vehicle–or sparks galore again.
  • Once the booster cable has been removed from both vehicles, it’s safe to wind them up and put them away.

Pictures:

*Note changes made, the negative clamp on the dead battery should be on grounded metal instead of on the negative post of the dead battery.

Looking from behind, here is a picture of a truck battery with the posts on the side, the positive post has a red cap that first needs to be lifted off. You see the negative (black) post on the right, no cap, and looks just like a nut and bolt. That bolt is where you clamp the booster cables to:

Picture of Vehicle Battery Before Booster Cables Attached - Tipnut.com

Here is a view looking from the front of the hood, you’ll notice the top of the red cap hanging off and the clamps from the booster cable are attached to each post:

Picture of Vehicle Battery With Booster Cables Attached - Tipnut.com

Here is a picture of an older vehicle’s battery, the posts are on top, uncapped and quite a bit larger to work with (instead of just a nut/bolt). You would clamp the booster cable onto each circle of the metal post. You can see the post on the right is tagged red (positive) and is a little larger than the negative post on the left:

A Different Battery Picture - Tipnut.com

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