Jump starters autozone how to#

However, when turning over an engine the battery will naturally suck as much power as it can, so by leaving the power connected you are giving it that little bit of extra oomph it might need.

Note that you may want to unplug the Mighty Jump or any other similar charging product before you do.

Plug in the Mighty Jump (or any of the following products) into the cigarette lighter port and wait 20 minutes.

Check that the headlights, radio, lights are all off.

Turn the key in the ignition just to the accessories point, which is to say the first click.

Most cars power down the cigarette port if the key is not present but you might be lucky.

Check whether the cigarette lighter port is powered even when the keys are not in the ignition.

In case you were wondering if you can jumpstart a car through the cigarette lighter port, the answer is: Yes! Here is how:

Jump starters autozone how to#

How to Jump Start a Car via the Cigarette Lighter Port Otherwise, you will waste some of the power in the Mighty Jump MJ04-G on a failed attempt and you may not have enough power to have a second try.įinally, I should mention one detail that is worth knowing when talking about all of these products. The manufacturer advises between 10 and 15 minutes but, especially since there is no light showing when all of the power has been sent to the car, I would wait 20 minutes just to be safe. Which leads us to our “word to the wise” or “pro tip”: take the time to really transfer as much power before you first try to start the car. The more you keep it plugged in, the more power is being transferred. When you are plugging it in to the cigarette lighter port, you are essentially transferring some of that power back into your car’s battery. You are not hooking it up directly to the engine, but if you did, it would barely have enough charge to crank the engine once or twice. You should also take into consideration that the Mighty Jump is essentially nothing more than a relatively small battery. That means the Mighty Jump can only trickle charge the battery so it can take anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes to charge the car’s battery enough that it will be able to crank the engine.Ī simple rule of thumb is that, the bigger the car is, the bigger the motor and the more juice it will need to jump start. The fact is that there are some very thin cables and a 10 Amp circuit breaker between the cigarette lighter port and the battery. So, now that we are clear about the unicity of the Mighty Jump, we should discuss how it works. We are going to feature several other products on here that will “jump start” your car via the cigarette port, but they will all require either a wall socket or a donor vehicle. Granted that phrase is fairly esoteric and mysterious, but what I am trying to say is that the Mighty Jump is the only product on the market that will charge your car’s battery through the cigarette lighter port, using its own internal power source. If you are looking for self-reliability besides simplicity, this is the one, and only product that you will be interested in. That is because through this method you are not really jump starting the car, in the sense of using the power of a donor car to start your own, but actually charging back your car’s battery so that it will be able to start the engine on its own power. There is also the fact that the flow of current through the cigarette lighter itself is relatively low so, depending on your engine size and manufacture you may have to wait for up to 20 minutes for the dead battery to pick up enough charge to get the car started. However, there are several problems with this system, not the least of which is the fact that the cables and the charging ports need to be of the best quality so that enough power will flow from one car to the other. The obvious advantage in using that port is the fact that it allows you to start the car without having to open the hood, getting the polarities right, or even having to go on a quest for your battery, because on some cars it can be hidden under the passenger seat or in the boot of the car. One of the most controversial ways of jump starting a car is by using a really long cable and the cigarette port of the car.