Forget Jumper Leads, Get Yourself a Portable Jump Start Battery Pack Instead
When I was a student and I used to drive around in an old clunker, I always used to carry a set of jumper leads in the car with me.
Jumper leads, in case you didn't know, a pair of heavy duty insulated copper wires that I used to link one car's flat battery to another vehicles good battery. The other charge from the good battery has to travel the length of wire between the two vehicles and, with any luck, they will give a boost to the flat battery to take over the engine and get the car started.
But sometimes, the booster cables would not be able to transfer enough power to the car with a flat battery. This could be because any one of the four spring battery clips was making poor contact with a battery terminal, all because the supply voltage dropped too much along the long length of jumper wire.
These days, however, you can buy a cheap jump-starter battery pack which combines a small spare battery in a convenient plastic case together with two short jumper leads and two spring terminals.
The much shorter length of cable ensures that voltage drop is minimized, and having two spring clip terminals instead of four spring clips actually halves your chances of a bad connection someplace. So these portable jump-start battery packs work better than the old jumper leads ever did. They are much more reliable.
You can buy a jump-start battery pack at any auto-supply store or in the auto-supplies section of any supermarket. These battery packs are normally supplied with a small wal-wart type power supply that can charge the battery from your household 110 (or 220) volt A/C mains supply, plus a 12 volt DC charge cable that can charge the pack off your car's cigarette lighter socket while the engine is running.
Maybe Santa could put one in your stocking this Christmas!
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