Battery boost question, help needed

[Lax516]

Hi. I'm new here, but have been lurking a while.

My wife has a stock 2003 XLT. Apparently she or one of the kids left a light in the car on and after only about 2 hours the battery was dead. I went to boos the car using my car, I even checked the owner's manual and followed the instructions. I connect the + to both cars, then the - to my car battery, and the other - to the "charging post" on her motor. After about a minute, the - that I had connected to the charging post started smoking and was glowing red.

Any ideas as to what the problem may be and also, what cause this to happen??? I've been around cars a bit, never seen that before.

Thanks.

 

[matt0248]

Never seen a "charging post", is it intended to be a ground post or a +12V post? It may be possible that you hooked up the cables wrong or the load (the dead explorers electronics) was really high. Were you attempting to start the explorer when the cables got hot? You said you read the owners manual which one, the explorers manual or your cars manual. I assumue you connected both red cables to the + battery post, the black cable to the ground of the explorers battery.

 

[tv4fish]

Just go - Battery to battery

I don't know about any "charging post" on the engine either ??
To jump start it - just go with the cables attached to each BATTERY -- red cable to + terminal on both batteries and black cable to each - terminal on each battery - should just spark a little when you connect - if they get hot, something else is wrong.

 

[imp]

Not Known Here.....

What is not known here, is whether a light left "on" caused the dead battery. More likely, a sudden, very high load on the battery discharged it quickly; this could happen due to a shorted diode within the alternator.

Simply connecting jumper cables batery-to-battery should do nothing more than begin "charging" the dead one from the "good" one.

Also a "could be", but very unlikely, is a shorted cell or cells in the dead battery.

Just my opinion.

imp

 

[Lax516]

Thanks for the replies.

On my car, I connected the positive and negative directly to the battery.

The Explorer manual call for the positive cable to the battery, and the negative cable to the post on the engine... see page 202 of the manual. I'm thinking there's a short.

 

[tv4fish]

Simply connecting jumper cables batery-to-battery should do nothing more than begin "charging" the dead one from the "good" one.

Imp: You are incorrect - I have made the assumption that the battery cables in the car he is trying to start are STILL attached. By jumping form battery to battery - he is utilizing the "good" battery to supplement the low voltage from his "dead" battery. It would be no different than if he had long cables from the good battery directly to his starter and a ground in his car. Now - if he's trying to jump with 16 ga. wires - a different story entirely - but if he's using proper ga. jumper cables, THAT is what he's doing.

 

[imp]

Imp: You are incorrect - I have made the assumption that the battery cables in the car he is trying to start are STILL attached. By jumping form battery to battery - he is utilizing the "good" battery to supplement the low voltage from his "dead" battery. It would be no different than if he had long cables from the good battery directly to his starter and a ground in his car. Now - if he's trying to jump with 16 ga. wires - a different story entirely - but if he's using proper ga. jumper cables, THAT is what he's doing.

My statement which you quoted is not incorrect if applied in general to a condition where a discharged battery is connected in parallel to a fully-charged one. The statement may or may not apply to the case being discussed, as we do not know that a short-circuit does NOT exist somewhere in the system, possibly in the discharged battery. imp

 

[D Hook]

Try cleaning the battery cable connections on the dead vehicle and jumping it again.

Please post a follow up so others can gain from your experience.