Re: Jump start question

Posted by Tobs On 2012/8/14 8:12:31

When a battery is dead, and you hook up the jumper cables from the running vehicle, and try to start right away, you are asking the running vehicle (and the jumper cables) to charge the battery, and start the car at the same time. This is a big load on the charging system of the running car, and probably why the car would not start. After charging for a few minutes the 'dead' car started since not all the juice was being taken up by the dead battery.
You can also remove the dead batt from the circuit while starting, and then reconnect once the car is running.

The magazine skinned knuckles had an article on this recently that is probably clearer than what I tried to explain here.