Charging Your Battery

One time, when I was out on a date I ran into a little mechanical trouble. This mechanical trouble was so cliche that no one ever believed me when I said it was an honest accident. The cliche that I am talking about here is coming out of a movie to go home, and the car won't start. Talk about embarrassing. I mean really, everyone thought that since this problem is so easy to fix, that I must have been faking it. Oh well, life goes on. At that time, I never realized that charging your battery was so easy, go easy on me—I was young and stupid, ok? It turns out that there are several ways that you can go about charging your battery.

• Jumping. This is the old stand by that pretty much everyone knows about. In order to charge your battery by jumpstarting, or "jumping" it, you are going to need two things. The first is a set of jumper cables, and the second is another car or truck. You first need to park the working vehicle close to inoperative one. By close, I mean close enough that you can stretch the jumper cables from one battery to the other, but not close enough where the cars are going to be touching. Now connect the two batteries by attaching the red cables to the red (+) posts, and the black cables to the black posts (-). Start the car that works, and then wait for a couple of minutes. Now try to start the inoperative vehicle. It should start right up, if not, then wait a few more minutes.
• Nothing. This method does not mean you sit there and wave your hands at the car, and it is going to magically become working again. What it means is that the alternator in your car should be working to the point that if you have a drained battery, and you are able to get the car jumpstarted or started through one of the other methods listed below, then it should start charging the battery again. If this is not the case, then you are going to need to replace the alternator, or alternator belt in your car.
• Battery Charger. A battery charger is a piece of equipment that you can purchase at just about any automotive parts store, or from the automotive section of any department store. These pieces of equipment can be plugged into a regular wall jack, and use the house electricity to charge your battery, either while you have it connected to your car or in the event of a lack of extension cords, through it being disconnected.
• Solar Charger. Similar to the plug in battery charger, but a piece of equipment that works off of solar power. This is something that you can hook up to your car while you are at work, or doing something else and as long as it is not too cloudy or dark can charge your battery for you.