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Thursday, July 28, 2005

Jump Start

I've never felt easy wielding those jumper cables and pincering them onto those batteries - *and* I've always held a bit of my breath before turning the ignition of the 'dead' vehicle.

If anything, I feel even more insecure after reading this expert advice and see all things I was oblivious to, such as

It being critically important to shut off the boosting car’s engine during the moments of actual cranking of the car with the dead battery.

That there's an exact order in which cables must be connected.

That the other end of the Negative (-) cable should be connected to "a good solid metal part of the engine on the dead car. Usually a giant shiny nut on the engine block will do."

I was never told to avoid placing the Negative (-) cable directly on the dead battery as a precaution against explosions."

// posted by Corfucius @ 2:09 am

Comments:

I followed the directions on the tag of my Rite-Aid cables, but they were slightly ambiguous schematic directions. A car battery is powerful enough to heat the clamps such that the plastic melts. I knew something was wrong when it started smoking. Then it was a matter of taking the clamp off in time to avoid having the battery explode. Both cars' electrical systems seem fine.

# posted by

Anonymous : 7:14 am

Wow! You describe my worst fears each time i take up those clamps. I've seen smoking leads and melting plastic in the Greek isles where they seem both to hold life cheap and be inveterate experimenters in all things mechanical.

Another kamikaze habit they have is to frolic about in a swimming pool before descending still dripping to the 'engine room' where, amid sparks and sizzles from a dodgy fuse box, they'll proceed to execute a full filtering and backwash.

# posted by

Corfucius : 11:37 am

busker

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Jump Start

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