How to Restart a Car/ Connect Jumper Cables

Alright girls, let’s learn how to restart our cars. It really is simple and takes a few minutes once the other car has arrived. There is no sense in calling a tow-truck for this one. As long as you have jumper cables (which should be in your kit!)

To restart your car or someone elses’ the you will need:

  1. Another vehicle (with working battery)
  2. Jumper Cables

Jumper Cables are a pair of thick wires ranging in length from 9 to 20 feet. Each end has a set of positive and negative clamps (one red(+) and one black(-)). You will be attaching one end to the battery on the host car (not dead) and one end to the victim! So ladies, let’s go through the motions:

  1. Park the two cars so that the fronts are near each other (unless your battery is in the trunk: park accordingly) The idea is to get the batteries as near to each other as possible so your jumper cables can reach. Turn the vehicles off, remove keys.
  2. Open the hood of your cars. There are several ways to do this, usually the procedure is to find the hood release latch near your foot pedals (driver side). There will be a small pictorial of opening the hood on the latch. Pull this latch/lever. You will here a kind of pop noise. Go to the front of the vehicle, the hood will be slightly raised, feel your hand under the middle-front portion of the hood. There will be another lever there that you must trigger to open the hood. The exact way this works varies from car to car, so consult the owner’s manual.
  3. Now, you will need to find the batteries. They are blocks with two terminals sticking out from the top. There are two  common configurations you will see depending on what type of vehicle you have; either gas or diesel:
      1. Gas- you have one battery. It is either under the hood, (front) which is most common, or in the trunk (see owners manual for location). A battery has 1 positive (red) and 1 negative connection (black)
      2. Diesel- you have 2 batteries. The trick is to find out which battery is the main battery. The indicator is that there are several additional thick wires running to the red terminal. You don’t need to know where they go, just that this is the main battery. This is the only battery you will be dealing with. I can answer all your questions about diesel motors and trucks, having owned many diesels, just comment.
  4. *****I am in the middle of finishing this article!!!!!!