How to jump start your van – a useful guide
OKAY, you’ve been dispatched with a big order and time is of the essence. You hop into your trusty van, turn the ignition and….nothing. The battery is flat. Time and money are slipping away, so you’ll need to get your van jump-started ASAP.
Jump starting a van is not as daunting as it sounds, however, you shouldn’t try it if the battery is damaged, cracked or frozen.
If you are in a position to do it, here’s a simple guide to getting you up and running again. Before you start, you’ll need jump leads and another van which works.
1. Get the two vans to face other and make sure both engines are switched off. Lift the bonnet of the vans and locate the positive (+) and negative (-) ends of the batteries.
2. Clamp the red cable onto the positive side of the flat battery in your van, then attach the other end of the cable to the positive part on the battery in the other van which works. Next, attach the black cable to the negative end of your battery and then hook up the other end of the cable to negative part of the working battery in the other van.
3. Before you start the engine of the working van, make sure things like radios and heaters are turned off as they will waste the energy you need to jump start your van. Turn on the engine and run it for a few minutes. Give the engine a little rev so it can produce a current of power for the battery.
4. Try to start the engine of your van and if, necessary, give it a bit of rev to help it along.
5. If all that has worked and battery has sprung back to life again, you need to take the jump leads off. This needs to be done in the reverse order to which they were attached. So, remove the black cable from the original working van and then from the the one which had the flat battery, then take off the red cable from the working van followed by the one on the newly revived van.
Now you’re on the road again so give yourself a pat on the back. Keep on moving as it helps to drive around a bit to get things running nicely again. If you can, you should also plug the battery into a charger overnight.
If you’ve tried all these steps and the battery still isn’t responding, it may need to be replaced so best to get it checked out by a specialist.