Jump Starting Trick

Recently I came upon a fellow TDI owner in a parking lot with a VERY dead battery. He had the cables hooked up to his car and was trying to get jump started from a Pick-up truck. No matter how long they waited between starts, the TDI would barely turn over the starter.



The issue? Grossly inadequate 10 guage jumper cables. The cables simply were too small/narrow gauge wire to carry enough current.

I tried with my car thinking the battery would be stronger, but we had the same issues. I knew it wasn't the battery power, it had to be the capacity of the cables.



Then it occurred to me- Why not double up the cables. I had a set of cables in my trunk, and clipped them to the set the first two people were using.

Of course fitting 2 jumper cable alligator clips to a single post was nearly impossible, so I hooked one red alligator clip directly to the red clip on the first set of cables, and did the same for black. For both the discharged car and the jumper car.



Then with more than enough current being transferred from my car to the other, it cranked very quickly and stated with no problem.



I've used this trick for quite some time, ever since trying to jump start a 1976 Mercedes 300D back in the day, but the other two guys had never seen it done. SO, if you've never heard of this, and you have two sets of cables, try it next time you cant get enough power to jump start it.



Maybe it'll help someone here by posting this.



It's always better to get a set of 4 gauge or 2 gauge cables, but if that's not possible this trick works too.

I made my own with some welding leads. Nice and flexible, long...

I use them during summer to start my irrigation pumps directly without a battery, as I seem to have battery thieves...

Cummins 855 big cams....

Sent from my 2PS64 using Tapatalk

You could always try this if you have a couple of spare ak47’s in the trunk.

Awesome!

Sent from my 2PS64 using Tapatalk

Or just buy a set of decent thick cables in the first place. My jump pack and cables are sufficiently thick enough for the job by themselves. Why are you traveling around with dinky useless cables would be my question.

teoman said:

You could always try this if you have a couple of spare ak47’s in the trunk.

Click to expand...

I wonder if they unloaded them first...

Cheers,

PH

From the looks of it they'd be putting that 'yota out of its misery.

turbobrick240 said:

From the looks of it they'd be putting that 'yota out of its misery.

Click to expand...

A pretty tall order. My granddaughters best couldn't kill the Corolla until it had had enough and impaled it's self on a pickup truck tow hitch at about 25 MPH.