How To Change A Dead Car Battery in 1 Hour or Less!
So you just bought a new car and after taking it back to the dealer for an oil change, they tell you that your car battery is dead. What do you do? That’s easy…just go back to the dealership and complain about how there is something wrong with your car that left them with no choice but to replace your brand new battery. Okay, this is not something that you should do every time something happens to your car. In some cases, you are more than capable of fixing it yourself and you will probably save some time and money doing so as well!
Table of Contents
STEP 1: OPEN THE HOOD
It’s simple and pretty self-explanatory however one thing you should know before we get started is that we need to move the red (positive) clamp from the dead car battery to the good battery first. This will help prevent sparking while connecting other cables since it has priority over everything else.
STEP 2: LOCATE THE BATTERIES (Some cars have them in the boot)
Usually, there are only three types of batteries; starting, deep cycle, and dual-purpose (starting/deep cycle). If you are able to locate your battery, start by removing the dust cover/top where you will find two terminals. If there are more than that, congratulations! You just located your deep cycle batteries.
STEP 3: POSITIVE = RED CLAMP
As I stated above, if you cannot locate both of your batteries, make sure the red clamp is on the good one before doing anything else. After you have confirmed which is which, remove both cables from each respective terminal. For the ones with side clips (holds cables in place), simply pry them upward with a screwdriver or whatever tool you can find for this purpose and slide them off the end of the post.
STEP 4: NEGATIVE = BLACK CLAMP
Now, we will need to locate our negative cable. This one is generally black and it may be under some sort of rubber/plastic casing as seen below:
If the cables are not held in by clips or rings, remove them with a wrench or pliers before trying anything else.
STEP 5: CONNECTION TIME!
Now that we have both batteries exposed and we know which one is good, we can move on and connect the jumper cables. If you don’t already know how to do this, I’ll explain it step-by-step:
- Attach RED clamp (POSITIVE) from dead car battery to BLACK clamp (NEGATIVE) on the good battery
- Attach BLACK clamp (NEGATIVE) on the dead battery to any metal part of the car
- Attach RED clamp (POSITIVE) from good car battery to removed dust cover/top of a dead battery.
Be sure that you do not touch these clamps with your hands at all during this process! After the connection is made, start up your vehicle and run it for a couple of minutes so your alternator can charge the dead battery back up. Once you are satisfied, simply remove each cable in reverse order mentioned above and shut the hood. You just saved yourself a lot of money by making one simple “how-to” guide!
Charging Your Car Battery
If you don’t want to change or jump-start your car battery but you want to charge it before starting the car follow these steps.
Buy a charger. Find your battery and connect the RED clamp (Positive) to the positive part of your battery, and do the opposite for the negative one. Then connect the charger to a wall socket and let the car battery charge for at least an hour or two. The charging length will differ depending on your battery size, manufacturer, and charger.
