How To Boost A Car Battery With A Booster Pack Properly

For ages, jumper cables have been the ultimate solution for boosting a dead battery for vehicle owners.

However, this traditional method is no longer convenient, especially for the newer breed of cars. The method produces a high voltage spike which might end up damaging the digital components in the vehicles involved.

The birth of booster packs eliminates the safety hazards associated with jump cables by giving your dead car battery a jump at safer voltage levels.

This guide details how you can use a booster pack to boost your car battery.

Is your booster pack ready for use?

Before you start using your power pack, you should make sure it’s fully charged. Booster packs rely on a built-in battery for power.

The battery needs periodical charging. Failure to keep your pack charged could make its battery degrade to a point where it can’t accept or hold a charge anymore.

These devices usually come with an indicator light that lets you know when they need to be charged. Usually, you should recharge your booster pack after every use, and once every 6 months.

How To Boost Your Car With A Booster Pack:

Step 1: Put Your Booster Pack Into Position.

If your power pack is fully charged and ready for use, Position it in such a way that the cables can easily jump from it to your vehicle. But at the same time, place it as far away from the battery of your vehicle as possible.

Step 2:Turn Off Your Booster Pack and Vehicle

BEFORE you establish any connections between the booster pack and your car, make sure the booster pack is switched OFF. This is important to prevent the production of sparks which might, in turn, lead to an explosion.

Likewise, you’ll need to turn off your vehicle before camping the jump cables to the battery. This protects your car's electrical components from damages in case you don’t connect the cables properly. Make sure you turn off other equipment in your car, including lights, stereo, etc.

Step 3: Connect The Booster Pack To Your Car

Now that you have turned off your car and the booster pack, you can proceed with connecting them using the jumper cables. Start by clamping the red (+ve) jumper cable to the positive terminal of your car battery.

Then, connect the black (-ve) booster pack cable to any metal part of your car that’s clean, non-painted, and non-moving. We suggest choosing an area far from your battery, fuel lines, or carburetor

NOTE: While most car owners connect the negative jumper cable to the negative terminal of the car battery, we suggest connecting it to the vehicle chassis (the negative terminal of car batteries is grounded by connecting them to your car chassis anyway).

This is a safer connection in case your car battery is producing hydrogen gas as a spark when connecting the batteries could lead to a fire or an explosion

Make sure that both connections are tightly clamped into place to keep them from detaching when the car starts.

TIP: If you connect your cables wrongly (i.e. in reverse), the booster pack usually outputs a warning light.

Nice To Read: How Many Amps Can a Car Battery Supply?

Step 4: Turn ON Your Booster Pack

When you have confirmed that you made the right connections and they’re tight, you can now go ahead and turn ON your portable jump starter.

When you turn it ON, try to start your car.

BUT be extra careful how you go about this step or you’ll end up damaging your booster pack!

This Is How to Go About It Safely:

If the engine doesn’t start right away, DON’T crank it for more than 5 seconds. Why? It’s simple…Whenever you try jumpstarting your vehicle, the device is forced to deliver its maximum current (and it does this in short bursts).

Cranking the engine for longer will, therefore, cause your booster pack to overheat and its battery gets possibly damaged.

For every 5-second cranking attempt, give your power pack a break of 2-3 minutes for it to cool down and enable its voltage to recover.

By following this simple rule, you’ll not enable your device to deliver maximum current when you try your car but you also increase the booster pack’s lifespan.

Step 5: Detach the booster pack from your car.

After your car battery has been boosted and your car engine starts running, the work of your portable jump starter is over and you can now remove it.

To remove it correctly, you should first switch it OFF. Next, detach the NEGATIVE jumper cable from your car. The positive jumper cable (red) should be the last to remove from your car.

TIP: After removing your booster pack and giving it time to cool down, make sure you recharge it, even if it still holds a good amount of charge, to increase the lifespan of its battery. NEVER let the power pack discharge completely.

Additional Tips and Advice for Using a Booster Pack

Final verdict

That’s how you boost your dead car battery using a booster pack or portable jump starter in 5 simple steps. As you can see from this guide, this process is almost similar to the traditional jump cable method and anyone can do it without prior experience.

The only difference here is that you’re replacing the donor car with the portable jump starter as a safer, more convenient alternative.