Recently I gave a jump to someone who’d left his car headlights on and drained his battery. Because I have a healthy respect for anything containing moving parts, flammable liquids, and battery acid, I followed the directions for giving a jump in my owner’s manual to the letter. These instructions run to seven pages. To summarize, they say to turn on the heater blower in both vehicles to prevent damage from voltage surges, turn off all other switches and lights in both vehicles, connect and disconnect the jumper cables in the order specified (positive terminal of dead battery, positive of booster battery, negative of booster battery, body BUT NOT negative terminal of dead car), and let the booster car run for several minutes before trying to start the dead car. The guys from whom I had to borrow the jumper cables treated me like an idiot, insisting that they just slap the cables on in any order, doing nothing more than going from red to red and black to black without bothering with other precautions. My question is this: Is it really necessary to be anal when jump-starting a car? What could happen if I used the slapdash method? Are there any real-life instances of terrible consequences of haphazard jump-starting (but spare me the gory details if the answer is yes)? –Connie, via e-mail
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(3) In light of the above, the seven pages of instructions in your owner’s manual consist of sensible things all car owners should do. Space doesn’t permit reviewing every step, but the key is attaching the last clamp to the car body, strut, etc, not the battery terminal. The last connection, if you make good contact, inevitably sparks, and you want said sparks to occur far from the battery, lest they cause a gas buildup to explode.
