Car Battery is Down How To Start?
Car batteries have always been a helping hand when you’re in a rush. But usually, a car battery lasts about 3-4 years on average and if you have made your car spend nights with headlights and the roof lights on, it will be a disaster.
It is because modern cars already come with too many electric options and settings.
Some even come fully electric which means they totally rely on their batteries. Therefore, these car owners are mostly seen to be asking car battery is down, and how to start it. But no worries because now we are going to tell you all about this topic and provide you with the best solution tips.
Car Battery is Down How to Start?
So when you are stranded on the road with your car not starting up, the most hated thing is your car if that’s not turning on. And that can be because of so many reasons like can be a mechanical, electrical shortage or power surge, or battery problem.
How will you get to know what happened to the car and how to fix it? Well, as there are so many tips on each type of problem, the best one that we can give you is that you have to check if it is a mechanical problem or the electrical problem.
And for that, you just have to try to start the car and if there’s even just a little crank in the ignition, it means the battery is all good. So there must be a mechanical problem with the engine.
A solution for this problem is the jump-starter and another solution to this problem is the push-start option. So let us tell you the jump-start method first.
Jumpstarting the car
The jump-start method is very old in the car electrical industry and almost every driver knows about it. But this doesn’t become successful if you don’t have the proper equipment for this. Like you need to have pair of jump start wires in good condition and another car with a powerful donor battery.
If you have all of this available near you, you can just dive into it.
Steps
- Inspect battery condition
First of all, you need to look at the battery to see if it is in good condition or not. If your car battery is in good condition and doesn’t leak the acid, or isn’t cracked or damaged, then you can charge it, otherwise, don’t.
- Turn off all the electrical components of your car that can drain your battery by any chance
Electrical components run on power and if the battery is already dead, they will start taking power from the donor battery. Therefore, make sure that they are all turned off and that the power supplied by the donor battery is only charging your car battery. The major electrical components include the heater, AC, radio, lights, wipers, and the GPS or alarm system.
- Bring both the cars near to each other
Bringing cars is not necessarily important if you have long enough connection wires that can reach the terminals of both car batteries easily. This is just to ensure that the connection is successful.
- Connect jumper cables with both the batteries
The connection of the jumper wires requires a little bit of caution since it is now getting serious. So you just have to connect the positive wire that is usually denoted with the red color to the positive terminals of each battery. This way one end of the wire will connect with the positive terminal on the dead battery and the other end will connect to the positive terminal of the working battery. Then comes the tricky part. In this step, you need to connect the negative wire usually denoted with black color to the negative terminal of the working battery. But on the other side, the other end of the negative wire should be connected or touch the bare metal of the dead car like the engine mount.
Remember to not connect both wires at the same time and do it step by step. Also, never touch any bare metal during this process. It is good if you wear gloves or at least just hold the insulated part of the wires. The car will get the earth from this connection.
- Now start the donor car
After completing the above connection, you will need to start the donor car and let it charge the dead battery for at least 10 minutes. In those ten minutes, the flat car battery will hold enough charge to let the dead car engine start, and then you can charge it with the alternator. But just don’t start the dead car yet.
- Try to start the dead car
When you have waited for 10 minutes and the flat battery can support the engine to start, give it shot. If the dead car starts it’s good but if it doesn’t then you might have to wait for a bit longer. Also, if you’ve waited long enough and the car is still not starting, then it is time to call for professional help and change the battery.
- Disconnect both the leads from both sides
Whatever the results just disconnect all the connections after the process because your car will either start or you’d have to call for help.
- Leave your car idle for at least 5 more minutes
Now if your car has turned on, then you just have to wait for another five minutes to let your battery hold enough charge. Once that’s done, congratulations you’re back on the road now.
But this method is only applicable if you or the donor car owner has the jump-start wires. Otherwise, you’d have to go the other way and that is by pushing the car. So how does that work? Let’s find out.
How to jump-start a manual transmission car without cables?
This method requires the car to be moving forward at least at a speed of 10mph. And achieving this speed with your car and its dead battery is not so easy. So basically what you need to do is to place your car on sloppy terrain and keep the front side of the car facing downwards.
Now let the car move a little bit on the downward slope and then turn on the ignition of the car. You will need to put the car in the second gear by pressing the clutch paddle and then putting it in the second gear.
After that, you’ve done that, just wait for a bit so that the car can catch up to some speed. When the car reaches about 10 miles per hour, you can leave the clutch while the ignition is on and the engine is in its second gear. The car engine will crank up a little bit and then hopefully start. If it doesn’t start the first time, then keep pressing and leaving the clutch over and over again.
Let’s just say that your car didn’t start and you have already made it to the down spot. Now it is hard to push it back up and then restart the procedure. That’s why now you’d need a helping hand or two to push your car ahead and repeat the process.
How to jump-start an automatic transmission car without cables?
As you may know now the jumpstart method of a manual transmission car without the jumpstart cables that it is a lot easy. But since we’re now talking about the jumpstart method of an automatic transmission car, so pushing it is not the option here.
Actually, it is a bit tricky and different because there’s no clutch that works only as a clutch in this type of car. So what should you do when you are stranded in the middle of nowhere and your car battery died for some reason?
Assuming that you don’t know anything, let’s tell you all about it. So in this situation, if you are driving an automatic transmission car, then the only option left for you is to charge the battery of your car with a portable car battery charger and nothing else.
Now to charge your car, you need to connect that charger to your car battery terminals and then wait for at least 20 minutes straight. After 20 minutes, your car battery will get recharged enough to let the car start. Just start the car after that time and move to the nearest professional help center to make sure you don’t need help anymore.
Conclusion
We told you it won’t be difficult because there’s no rocket science in getting your car moving on the road. But most of the time, if the car battery is dying too fast and doesn’t recharge even after too long, then it is time to change it. Otherwise, getting your car fully inspected every month by a professional is very important because you don’t want to ask in the middle of the road car battery down, how to start?
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FAQs – Car battery down, how to start?
How do you start a car whose battery is down?
Starting a car that has got a flat battery is very easy with two majorly used methods. One is starting by jumpstart and the other one is starting by the bump-start method. Both of these methods work well but the bump start method is not for automatic transmission vehicles.
It is because the bump start method includes using the clutch and manual gear system so that cannot be done in those cars. Therefore, automatic gear transmission car owners would have to keep a portable car battery charger in their cars.
How can I start my car with a dead battery and no other?
If you got a flat battery in the middle of the road, then the best option to start your car would be to find a donor car. But sometimes you don’t even find the donor cars because you are stranded alone.
Well, in that case, you’d need to push start the car by turning the ignition system on, putting the engine in the second gear, and then pushing the car forward while pressing the clutch down. This way, you will just have to wait for the car to only pick up enough so that the car is at enough speed that you can leave the clutch.
What happens after a battery dies?
So when a car battery keeps getting used up to its limits, the battery components start losing it. The most important thing is that they start losing the tendency to separate the charges stored in the battery cells.
And when that happens because of chemical reactions, the battery stops storing the charge or even dies in the most severe cases.
