Reading an article which happened to mention the risks around jump starting a car - of which I was unaware and imagine others to be too. Beware sparks near a battery, particularly a discharged battery which may have hydrogen gas around the terminals. A spark can therefore cause a battery to explode.
Therefore, connect positive to positive. And then negative on the flat battery. And then to an earthing point on the live car.
And if using a battery charger, attach it to the battery terminals and then turn it on at the wall so you are well away from it.
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Sound advice, but i think it's the wrong way round re: hydrogen discharge. You're more likely to have hydrogen around the terminals as you're disconnecting - battery is being charged extremely fast during a jump start, which will lead to gassing. Best not to leave it connected to 2 alternators for too long!
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AFAIK gassing only occurs once a battery is fully charged and you try to pump more charge in.
I think in a ventilated space the risk of explosion is greatly over-stated. The more relevant risk I thought was of doing some damage to the electronics of either vehicle by electrical surges.
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...The more relevant risk I thought was of doing some damage to the electronics of either vehicle by electrical surges...
Agreed.
I am very wary of jump starting a modern car.
The CC3 was jump started by the breakdown man after I flattened the battery.
No damage was done, but when I posted about it on here, Bellboy (remember him?) reckoned I was fortunate not to have fried the ECU.
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>> No damage was done, but when I posted about it on here, Bellboy (remember him?)
>> reckoned I was fortunate not to have fried the ECU.
There's much written about this subject and i'm very careful when jump starting a car, preferring to use my jump pack which has a master switch, means i can get the terminals connected securely before switching on.
However having witnessed and had umpteen hundreds if not thousands of jump starts over the years in car compounds, this is the usual scenario.
Transit mini bus turns up with the fattest longest jump leads you've ever seen permanently connected to the batteries.
Yardy (not that sort..;) jumps out, unwinds the cables from the frame and connects them or indeed just holds them to the terminals of the dead vehicle, the Tranny! has been running the whole time by the way.
AN Other simply turns the key in the dead vehicle which fires up...thats it, i'm not saying there's never a problem but if there is it's so rare as to not be worth the worry.
The only hiccup to the above is when there's something like a Transit or Japanese engined old school 4x4 that's flat, they often need a second or third set of leads connecting to carry enough current to turn the engine over, those extra leads are connected in the same it'll do manner.
After starting, the dead vehicle has the lights or more usually the hazards (easier to see which vehicle has been left running) turned on and the engine blipped to get the alternator fired up, it's possible to leave a car ticking over all day without putting anything electrical on and the alternator will not charge as presumably it's got nothing to work with.
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>>There's much written about this subject and i'm very careful when jump starting a car,
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Ford write in detail what to do when removing the jump leads.
The instructions are not easily guessed / obvious so IMO well worth a read.
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Jump starting/using a battery charger - Skoda
