By Dad, How Do I
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I had my wife help me with the camera this time since there were quite a few steps. :0)
Red Dead, Red Good, Black Good, Black Ground (dead).
The blue tool I show in the video is called a “battery terminal cleaner”, and you can find them at any auto parts store, although they may look a little different than mine.
You could also use a wire brush, but this is specifically meant for batteries.
I mention that a battery will last 6 to 12 years, and have had a few comments on that.
I have had batteries last 12 years, but there are lots of different factors for how long your battery will last. On average I would say it is probably closer to 6 years in my experience. (Climate is a huge factor, so you may only get 3 years in certain environments).
Interstate makes a great battery in my opinion.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:01
hey kids so
00:03
mom calls me and says honey the van
00:05
won’t start
00:06
do you think you can jump it and i
00:08
thought
00:09
well i think if i had a running start i
00:10
could probably get over the car but i
00:12
don’t think i can get over the van
00:14
so anyway i’m right here uh at the van
00:17
trying to give it a shot to start and
00:19
let’s see sure enough there’s nothing
00:23
so we’re gonna go uh pop the hood and
00:25
then i’ll just show you what
00:26
what we look for next and how we how we
00:28
jump a car all right
00:31
okay so the first thing we want to look
00:32
at unless if if you left your lights on
00:35
and you know it should your battery just
00:36
needs to be charged
00:38
um but if there was nothing that you
00:40
weren’t sure what exactly happened
00:42
then really you just want to look at the
00:44
at the
00:45
connections right so it could be because
00:47
a lot of times if you don’t pay
00:49
attention to your engine
00:50
these connections can be horrible okay
00:54
mine are pretty clean and i i’m pretty
00:56
sure actually in my case my battery is
00:58
just
00:59
the its life has just run out but
01:02
as you can see my connections are good
01:03
there’s no corrosion here but a lot of
01:05
times when you lift this up
01:06
there’ll be a lot of corrosion and
01:08
that’s what this tool is for
01:09
okay it uh this cleans the post you just
01:12
stick it on the post and twist it around
01:14
and then this fits up inside that
01:15
connector to clean that out so that’s
01:18
one thing to look for
01:19
okay so now
01:23
you want to make sure you have a good
01:24
set of jumper cables okay that’s where
01:26
you start
01:27
because you can these are these can be
01:30
pretty cheap
01:31
if you if you go too cheap on them you
01:32
just want to make sure you got a thick
01:34
gauge
01:34
make sure it’s good a lot of times those
01:37
safety
01:38
uh those car safety kits they come with
01:41
really cheap jumper cables
01:43
so i would say you might want to just
01:44
put together your own kit and make sure
01:46
you get a good
01:47
set of jumper cables inside there okay
01:50
okay so we’re at the dead battery right
01:52
that’s where we start
01:53
and an easy way to remember this is red
01:56
dead so we’re going to connect the red
01:59
to the red
02:00
on the dead battery okay um
02:03
but before you even do that you want to
02:05
look for a place
02:06
that you’re going to put the black one
02:07
that’s a ground you would think it would
02:09
go here
02:10
but that’s actually what everybody’s
02:11
scared of because that can cause a spark
02:13
when you actually connect that if you
02:15
connected it to here
02:16
i used to do that when i was younger i
02:17
never had a problem but just for safety
02:19
reasons we want to connect the black to
02:21
a ground
02:22
um in newer vehicles i think there’s an
02:24
obvious place where a ground is
02:26
but you want an unpainted uh surface
02:30
that is a ground and to be honest with
02:32
you
02:33
the best one i’m seeing is this right
02:36
that little nut right there is a ground
02:38
that i’m going to use
02:39
okay so we’re going to go ahead and
02:40
connect we’ll just leave the black
02:44
set off to the side if you have a helper
02:45
this makes it a little easier but i’m
02:47
trying to show you what it looks like
02:48
doing it by yourself if you have to do
02:50
it by yourself so
02:51
okay so we want to set this off to the
02:53
side and we want to connect the red
02:55
to the dead okay this battery is dead
02:58
there’s really nothing going on this is
03:00
just sitting here
03:00
okay we’re going to go over to the other
03:02
car the car with the good battery
03:04
and i’ll show you what we do there okay
03:07
so now we’re at the the car with the
03:09
good battery
03:10
and we go ahead and connect those and we
03:12
connect the red
03:14
to the red terminal okay
03:17
and you can just put it right on right
03:19
on there that’s good
03:20
and make sure that this is clean too
03:22
right so we’re getting good connections
03:23
make sure you get a good connection
03:25
so that’s that okay now we’re gonna go
03:28
back
03:28
to the dead battery okay
03:32
so now we’re back at the dead vehicle’s
03:34
battery
03:35
and like i said you’d think you’d
03:36
connect it there to the negative
03:38
but you’re actually not because there
03:40
can cause a spark and if something
03:41
if there’s some gases it could cause
03:44
yeah i mean i
03:45
when i was younger i uh i always did it
03:48
that way never had a problem so odds are
03:50
you’d be safe but just for pure safety
03:52
reasons this is the step that
03:54
everybody’s scared of
03:55
you want to connect this to that ground
03:57
that we talked about okay so right here
04:00
we’re connecting it to that make sure
04:02
you get a good
04:03
connection okay
04:07
so now we’re gonna go back to the
04:11
the good car battery and start the
04:13
engine
04:15
okay so we’re back in the car with the
04:17
good battery
04:18
we’re just gonna go ahead and start it
04:20
up okay
04:24
okay and so depending on how uh
04:27
how dead that other battery is you might
04:29
need to let this run for a couple
04:30
minutes
04:31
and you can even especially if you’re
04:32
working with two people
04:34
uh you could they could rev the engine
04:37
while you go ahead and try to start that
04:38
other
04:39
car okay and then also when you’re in
04:41
this car make sure everything’s off no
04:43
heater
04:44
no uh radio nothing we just want to have
04:47
it
04:48
all the juice going to the to the dead
04:51
uh batteries or the dead car’s battery
04:55
okay okay so we’re back in the van the
04:58
one with the dead battery and we’re just
05:00
gonna go ahead and give it a shot that
05:02
uh the other car’s been running for
05:03
about a minute or two and we’re just
05:05
gonna go ahead and give it a shot
05:08
okay
05:11
oh it didn’t start the first time let’s
05:12
try it again
05:17
there we go it’s running okay so in my
05:20
case the
05:21
i think my battery is just uh
05:25
over its lifespan they usually last
05:28
depends on the
05:29
the quality of the battery anywhere from
05:31
six to 12 years really depends
05:34
um so i think my battery is actually
05:36
just dead
05:38
and not going to hold a charge but what
05:40
you would normally do if you just left
05:41
your lights on
05:42
and you know that it was just that and
05:45
that’s why the battery was dead
05:47
now you would want to drive around you
05:49
know drive your vehicle for
05:51
10-15 minutes and then you know don’t go
05:53
too far
05:54
in case you have to if if you park
05:56
somewhere
05:57
then you may need to jump again right so
05:59
just be smart about that drive around
06:00
for like 10 or 15 minutes come back to
06:02
where you have a good vehicle
06:04
and then and then you can go ahead and
06:07
turn it off and see if it starts back up
06:09
okay so now that this is running
06:13
um i’m gonna go ahead and show you how
06:14
to take the cables back off because you
06:17
got to do that now right
06:18
basically all you’re doing is doing it
06:20
exactly the opposite of how we put them
06:22
on
06:22
okay so let’s go do that
06:25
okay so now we’re just gonna remove
06:27
everything just the opposite of we did
06:29
before okay
06:30
so you’re gonna remove this okay we took
06:33
that
06:34
off and really uh you could just go
06:36
ahead and remove this
06:38
right now if you wanted to the only
06:39
tricky part is you just want to make
06:40
sure that
06:41
the ends don’t touch so just to
06:44
be safe we’re just going to set this
06:46
here and you just want to set it
06:47
somewhere where it’s not sitting on
06:48
anything metal
06:49
again if this is by if you’re doing it
06:51
by yourself you’re doing it with
06:52
somebody else
06:53
it’s pretty easy to do this right
06:55
because then you could just hold the
06:56
cables
06:56
you could remove that they just hold the
06:58
cables apart while you remove the other
06:59
ones but just for safety we’re gonna go
07:01
back over to the other vehicle and
07:02
remove those
07:04
okay so we’re back at the good vehicle
07:06
battery and we’re just gonna remove it
07:08
like i said just the exact opposite of
07:09
we put things on
07:10
we’re taking off the negative now
07:13
nothing’s gonna spark
07:14
right there’s nothing the two just the
07:16
two reds are connected
07:18
but then just remove that okay now
07:20
there’s nothing there’s no spark because
07:22
that thing’s only connected to the red
07:23
on the other side so nothing to be
07:25
scared of there
07:26
okay let’s go back over to the other
07:27
vehicle okay so this is the last step
07:30
we’re just pulling this red off of here
07:32
right we want to remove that and then
07:34
actually i didn’t put that other cap
07:36
back on
07:37
on the positive you always want to put
07:38
that back on we’ll do that on the other
07:40
one
07:41
um and i’ll just go back and do that
07:43
real quick so you can see
07:44
okay so i should have done this when i
07:46
removed the cables but i didn’t so just
07:48
to make sure you don’t miss this step
07:50
make sure when you go ahead and remove
07:52
the cables from the good car that you
07:53
put it back
07:54
how it was when you started so if we
07:56
look down here
07:58
right this cap just needs to go back on
08:00
top of here because that protects the
08:02
corrosion
08:03
and you just want to make sure that
08:04
that’s that’s uh
08:06
gonna stay good for a long time for you
08:09
okay so
08:10
that’s about it um i think it’s it’s
08:12
pretty simple but i
08:13
i’m gonna drive my van around for a
08:15
little while and see if it holds a
08:16
charge and if it doesn’t then probably
08:17
my next video might be me
08:19
changing my battery out for you all
08:22
right
08:23
thank you uh you got this and i’m proud
08:25
of you
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
***
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
