What happens if you put the jumper cables on wrong?

What happens if you put the jumper cables on wrong?

Hooking the jumper cables up backwards can create disastrous results⁠. Possible outcomes include irreparable damage to the battery, fried electronics, and even serious personal injury. You might cause personal injury and/or damage to your car if you accidentally hook your jumper cables up wrong.

What happens if you put your car battery in the wrong way?

When a car battery is connected backward, a fuse designed to protect vehicle electronics should blow. If your vehicle doesn’t have a fuse (almost all cars do) designed for this purpose, you will send electrical current backward through systems in your car, including ECU, transmission control unit, and more.

What happens if you hook up a battery charger backwards?

A battery can explode when the cables are hooked up backwards. Anyone standing near the battery when it explodes could be seriously injured. Battery explosions can cause burns, permanent disfiguration and blindness.

What happens if you don’t ground jumpstart?

If you clamp the jumper cable to anything that isn’t the engine block, possibly hundreds of amps will try to flow from the meta, through a few weak engine grounding straps, to the engine block. Either it will melt the grounding straps away, or not provide many amps, probably both.

Why are the jumper cables on my car not working?

The battery cables themselves may be fried and require replacement in order to start the vehicle. The PCM or the main computer in your vehicle may also have been fried in the process but the battery cables are the most likely cause. Even more unlikely but still a possibility is that your starter is even damaged.

What happens if you reverse jumper cables and other mistakes?

Although jumpstarting a vehicle may seem like a simple task, there are several ways it can go wrong. Here are the most common: As was covered above, reversing the polarity of the battery cables can cause a range of problems, from blown fuses to fried electronics.

Where does the red jumper cable go on a car?

The other end of the red cable connects to the positive terminal of the good battery. One end of the black (negative) jumper cable connects to the negative battery terminal of the good battery. The other end of the black jumper cable connects to a good ground on the vehicle that won’t start.

What happens if you hook up a battery to a jumper cable?

Reverse-connecting a strong battery to a nearly-depleted battery that was itself connected properly would do likewise, though the depleted battery would pass much of the current itself (likely doing significant damage to itself in the process) thus reducing the amount of current flowing elsewhere.