Help! My battery is dead, what should I do?

You’re out on a camping trip, when you accidentally leave your headlamps on. Come the morrow, you turn the key in the ignition to find it doesn’t make that reassuring start up sound. The ice trickles into your veins, your senses sharpen, your breath quickens. Your car’s battery is dead, and the ol’ flight or fight response has been activated. What to do, what to do.

Lucky for you, there are a couple of options available to you. We’ll take a look at each in turn, placing them on the “screwy scale,” which, in other words, is how screwed you are.

4 levels of screwy

For reference, here’s are the four levels of screwy in ascending order:

Level 1: Mild – two cars, one fully functional, and jumper cables

Level 2: Lime and herb – one car, portable power pack

Level 3: Medium – one manual car, no portable power pack

Level 4: Walter White – a Winnebago in the middle of no where

Screwy level 1: Mild

Situation: You’re out camping with a group of friends, none of whom left the lights in their cars on. The Streetwise guy in the pack also brought along some jumper cables, you know, just in case this happens.

Like a plain-ish Nandos on a rainy day, this one should be a breeze. Just follow these steps and you should be up and running to get to the rest stop before midday, in time for diner coffee and runny eggs.

What you need

Working jump leads

Your car

Your friend’s car

Step 1. Safety first

The last thing you wanna do is to jump start a car with a damaged battery. This may lead to very undesirable results. Check to see if your battery looks damaged or is leaking. This should be fairly obvious to spot, and if in doubt, compare your battery with your friend’s to see how it holds up.

You also want to make sure your jump leads aren’t damaged either and, while in use, if they do start heating up, stop using them at once.

Battery not damaged? Jump leads good to go? Brills. Now, take off any loose clothing (scarfs, ties, baggy jumpers) and jewellery. You don’t want any of these getting caught up in the engine, and you certainly don’t want any metal objects to come into contact with the car’s battery (KaBoom).

Step 2. Get into position

Locate the position of each car’s battery (in some cars, this would be in the boot, or underneath one of the seats). The car’s battery usually looks like this:

Found the battery? Great. Now, tell your mate to move his or her car as close to yours (with the flat battery) as possible, so that the batteries are in close proximity to each other, without the cars actually touching. Now, kill the engines and get those hand brakes up.

Step 3. Connect the red jump lead

When you look at your car’s jump leads, you’ll notice that one’s black and the other one’s red. It’s the latter you’re interested in for the time being.

What you’ll want to do now, is to locate the positive terminals on both batteries. This is marked with a ‘+’. Hook the red jump lead up to the positive terminal on the flat car’s battery first (it has less energy than the working battery), and then connect the other end of the red jump lead to the positive terminal on the working car’s battery.

Make sure you don’t touch the cable’s clip to any other part of the car.

Step 4. Connect the black jump lead

Now’s the time for the other jump lead, which is black. Connect one end of it to the negative terminal on the working car’s battery, denoted with a ‘-’ sign.

This is where it gets a bit (but not too) tricky. Hook the other end of the black jump lead onto an earthing point. Some cars have a designated earthing point, which can be found in your car owner’s manual. If it doesn’t, then you’ll need to find a good earthing point manually.

What you’re looking for is a bare, unpainted piece of metal on the engine block or chassis, away from any of the moving parts, flat battery or fuel system. For example, you could locate the strut tower, with lots of solid bolts, which is away from the battery and fuel system, and hook your cable up there.

Your assembly should now look like this:

Run one last check to make sure none of the cables are close to the cooling fans, and that they form a clear, untangled line of connection from the working car to the flat car.

In a nutshell:

RED – FLAT – POSITIVE

RED – WORKING – POSITIVE

BLACK – WORKING – NEGATIVE

BLACK – FLAT – EARTH

Step 5. Start up working car’s engine

Stick the key into the ignition on the WORKING car, and start the engine. Let it run for a couple of minutes.

Step 6. Start up flat car’s engine

After a couple of minutes, get the key into the ignition of the flat car, and pray to whichever God or Gods you believe in that it starts up. Most of the time, if it’s just a case that you’ve run down your battery by leaving the lights on, the car should start up. If it doesn’t, let it rest for a couple of minutes and then try again. Hopefully this time round, it does.

If it still doesn’t start up, keep the flat car’s engine off and ask one of your friends to rev up the working car’s engine to about 2000 RPM and hold it there, while you try to kickstart the flat car.

If the flat car STILL doesn’t start up after a few attempts, then chances are it’s probably worse than just a dead battery. But don’t give up just yet. Check to see that the leads are PROPERLY connected to all the designated places in BOTH cars. Give them a bit of a wriggle to make sure that they’re securely in place, and then give it another go.

You also might want to try connecting the other end of the black jump lead to a different earthing point, in case the first one didn’t prove effective.

Still no? Kill both engines, get out your cell phone and pray for signal.

Step 7. Running time

AA suggests leaving both cars running for 10 minutes. RAC says 5, and Autoexpress has gone for 15. To be safe, let’s stick with AA’s version, and let both cars run for 10 minutes.

Step 8. Disconnect

First, switch off both engines and get the keys out of the ignitions.

It’s very important to disconnect the leads in REVERSE order as follows:

1. Start with the BLACK lead attached to the earthing point on the FLAT car. This is to avoid any kind of sparks, which can ignite a flame and possibly cause an explosion.
2. Remove the other end of the BLACK lead from the negative terminal on the WORKING car.
3. Next, disconnect the RED lead that’s attached to the positive terminal of the WORKING car
4. Finally, disconnect the RED lead that’s attached to the positive terminal of the FLAT car.

Also make sure that the ends of the leads DO NOT touch each other or any other parts of the car.

In a nutshell:

BLACK – FLAT – EARTH

BLACK – WORKING – NEGATIVE

RED – WORKING – POSITIVE

RED – FLAT – POSITIVE

Step 9. Good to go

Your flat car should start up, and you can make it in time for brunch.

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Screwy level 2: lime and herb

You’re on your camping trip, only this time you’ve all carpooled. Before leaving your home town, Mister Streetwise has advised you to get a portable power pack from the hardware store enroute the camping site.

I’ve called this lime and herb because this is a lot like jump starting your car with another car, only better: it harnesses the power of a portable pack to achieve the same end result.

Most portable packs come with built-in leads, but even so Mister Streetwise has urged you to buy extra jump leads.

What you need

(fully charged) portable power pack

Common sense

Step 1. Safety first

Just like when jump starting a car with another car, you’ll need to take some necessary precautions. Off go the loose jumpers and jewellery, and on comes the thinking cap (it’s invisible). Check to see that your battery is not damaged either.

First up, check that your portable pack is fully charged. It should come with instructions on how to do this, so take a moment to read through, and then check. If it’s not fully charged, read the instructions to see how to charge it, and then proceed.

Now, turn the engine off, pull the handbrake up, and let’s get busy.

Step 2. Connect to battery

Same ol’ formula: Red to the positive, black to bare, unpainted earthing point. If your pack doesn’t come with the integrated cables, start with red to positive on car battery, then other end of red to positive on portable pack, followed by black to negative on portable pack, with the other end on earthing point, following this rule of thumb:

RED – FLAT – POSITIVE

RED – WORKING – POSITIVE

BLACK – WORKING – NEGATIVE

BLACK – FLAT – EARTH

Once it’s all hooked up, turn the portable power pack on per the instructions, and let it run for a couple of minutes.

Step 3. Start the car

Key into the ignition, and give it a twist. If it splutters into life, brills. If not, give it a few more minutes to charge up, and then try again.

Started? Excellent, you’re nearly good to go. All you have to do then is turn off the power pack, remove the clamps in reverse order, that is black from earthen point, black on negative terminal on pack, red on positive terminal on pack, red on positive terminal on car’s battery.

If the pack has integrated cables, then it’s black from earthen point, and red from positive terminal on battery.

If it doesn’t start up, let it charge for a while longer and then try again. If it STILL doesn’t, try another earthen point, and give it another go. Also, make sure the red clip is securely fastened to the positive terminal(s). Still not starting? No worries. Send Mister Streetwise to scout for help, while you and the others kick back with a cola.

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Screwy level 3: Medium

Same scenario as level 2, only this time Mister Streetwise hasn’t joined you, which means you’ve got no portable power pack, no jump leads, and three guffawing goons for company.

Lucky for you, your car’s a stick, which makes this a hell of a lot easier. Or should I say, makes it possible altogether (you can’t bump start an automatic unless you’re Chuck Norris or Zlatan Ibrahimovic).

What you need

Two of your best goons for pushing

Common sense

Step 1. Eat your greens

Okay, jokes aside, there will be a lot of pushing involved, so just be prepared for that. Bump starting, as this is called, doesn’t come highly recommended, and sometimes may not even work, but desperate times call for desperate measures, so let’s get on with it.

It’s worth saying that if your car’s at the top of a hill, you won’t need much of a push. Maybe just a little one to get your car rolling (now see steps 2 onwards).

Step 2. Push the clutch in

Assuming you’re not on a hill, ask your friends to get into position, ready to start pushing at your command.

Push the clutch all the way in and hold it there. Put your car into second gear and turn the key until you see the ignition light coming on.

Step 3. Push!

Ask your friends to start pushing, after making sure your car’s clear of any oncoming traffic. The last thing you want is to lose a friend in this endeavour. If you happen to be perched on a hill, simply release the brake, and hope that your car starts rolling.

Push 4. Clutch release and go!

Ask your friends to keep pushing until your speedo’s showing about 8 km/h, and then release the clutch quickly, enabling the engine and gearbox to forge a connection. This effectively works like a starter motor, in that the wheels will turn the gears and then the engine, initiating the combustion cycle.

This is, of course, the best case scenario. If your friends are pushing beyond 10 km/h for some time, and the car doesn’t kick into life, then you’ve probably got more serious problems than a drained battery.

But let’s be optimistic. If your car does start up, hit the brake and come to a stop, leaving the engine running for 10 to 15 minutes, while you and your buddies cool off with a soft drink and high fives. Mission accomplished.

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Screwy level 4: Walter White

Do you remember that episode of Breaking Bad, when Walter and Jesse Pinkman take the Winnebago out into the middle of nowhere to cook up batches of Meth, and the latter leaves the key in the ignition causing the battery to drain?

Dead cell phones, not a single human being in sight within a fifty mile radius, emergency generator up in flames, and dehydration kicking in under the hot desert sun. A real recipe for disaster. Oh and forget about bump starting this one.

What happened next (spoiler alert)?

Walter fashioned 6 makeshift battery cells, using coins, nuts, bolts and washers for the anode, the Winnebago’s brake pads for the cathode, a sponge soaked in potassium hydroxide (handy they had some on board their meth mobile) as an electrolyte (urine would have done just fine, too) and a copper wire as a conductor.

He attached these to the Winnebago with jumper leads and sparked it back to life.

But let me explain why this is level 4 screwy. First, you’re probably no Walter White. Secondly, even if you were a Walter White, chances are your battery cells wouldn’t have enough power to start up the Winnie.

According to Script PhD, the Winnebago would have needed 20 times the power of those 6 cells to start. He would have been better off trying to fashion something to charge one of the cell phones instead and hope for signal.

So what should you do if you’re ever in such a situation?

This one’s a toughie. You’re definitely not going to make a portable battery and, if you’re out in the middle of nowhere, say a desert, you’ll need to survive long enough for somebody to come fetch you (surely you told at least one other person you were going out into the wilderness to find yourself, right?).

First, stay out of the Sun as much as you can. Cover your head, especially the top, with your t-shirt, or any other cloth you can find in your car. Ration your fluids, and don’t drink all your water in one go. Don’t eat too much, just a nibble here or there (the more you eat, the thirstier you get). Stay calm and try to distract yourself so you don’t panic and get even more dehydrated.

Keep your mouth shut, and move slowly towards a distant landmark that you can hopefully see. Try to leave a message behind before making your foray back towards civilization, and hope that whoever’s been sent out to get you, ends up finding you. You also want to stay warm when the temperature drops drastically in the night.

Hopefully it won’t come to this for you, but if it does, at least you’ll have something to tell the grand kids.

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Take precautions with Mikaniki

We are human, which means we do make mistakes and leave keys in the ignition, leave lights on and so on. This is quite unavoidable.

But it is worth getting your car serviced regularly, to ensure longevity and prevent damage.

Book yourself in with one of Mikaniki’s trusted garages today, and your car will thank you for it.

About Mikaniki’s Dummy’s Guide

We answer all your questions about basic car care in our dedicated Dummy’s Guide. From car foiling to engine oil, we’ve got you covered. Watch this space for more, and let us know in the comments section if you’ve got any pressing concerns that you’d like to see.