Jump - Start Your Car Using a Battery from the Drill

In this video, we are looking at the way to Jump-Start a car using a battery from the drill.
It's not the smartest thing to do, but it's handy to know.
Life it's full of surprises. Imagine staying at your friends house, in the middle of nowhere. You find out that your car's battery has died. Unfortunately, there are no car's around to ask for the Jump-Start.
Pushing is also not an option.
You have an important meeting that you can't miss.
What do you do?
Ask if your friend has a battery operated drill.
It might save your day.

As long as the battery is charged and same voltage as cars battery, you might get lucky.
Well, actually the voltage can be higher, but I am not sure at what point it becomes dangerous to car electronics.
My car's battery is 12v and I used 12v battery from a drill.
I believe that a drill with 14 or 16v would be safe to use, but It's just my believe, not a fact.
If somebody knows, please feel free to educated me in comments.

This trick will work the best with small cars, small car batteries.
Battery can't be completely dead, otherwise it's not gonna work.

In the video, I connected both batteries together. That way, the small battery was charging the big one. I only charged it for 8 minutes. Obviously, my car's battery was dead-ish not completely dead.
That's why I was able to do it.
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Warning: Use this video content at your own risk.
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[MnemonicHack]

For those wondering why this works (and most importantly, how it works and how it won't work):

There are two aspects to your battery. Voltage, and cold-crank amps. Your battery should be about 12.4 to 12.6 volts, lower than that and it's getting a little unhealthy.
Amps are important because they are what actually provides the power to ignite the gas-air mixture in your cylinders.

A normal 12 volt drill battery won't be able to dump enough amps all at once to start a car. Neither will 12 AA batteries in series. Because a car needs upwards of 400 amps to turn over a medium sized car. But what both can do, is over time recharge a slightly low battery to a point where it can potentially crank out enough amps. The lower the battery, the longer it will take to recharge and the less likely this is to work, but if your battery is sitting at around 11 to 12 volts, and you need to be at 12.6V, then it should work.

[LewisBloc]

Didn't expect it to work since my car has a lot of electronics but I tried my Ryobi power brick from my weed eater. Didn't start up right away but gave it 10 minutes and tried again. My Nissan Rogue coughed it's way back to life. Thanks for the post. I was looking for an out of box way to get the car started so that I could drive it to the auto parts store. Midday and nobody home to get a jump from so I'm thoughrolly pleased.

[samlau]

I thought he was going to crank the car with it haha

[jameslandon]

Well, if that didn't work I guess you'd just have to put that car in your pocket and walk home.

[winterjones]

This worked perfectly for me! I did it exactly as you demonstrated and was able to crank my car up within 5 minutes.

[ilickcarpet]

For all y'all talkin shyt, let this man live: this works! At least, for me it did: two sets of very basic jumper cables, each linked to a 1.3Ah Ryobi One+ Lithium18V battery, jumpstarted my 1996 Ford F150 4.9L I6 300 after less than one minute of waiting when my truck battery had only 250/750 CCA in its stock battery! I am very grateful to have found this video---THANK YOU, SHAKE THE FUTURE!

[VAlien]

I have done this before with a Dewalt 20v battery, nobody would take the time to give me a jump ....luckily I had my tools/drill in the trunk and remembered seeing it done before online and it worked fine.

[brianford]

For all those doubters, i just did it on an Audi A6; works fine. And there is no reason to wait 8min or any time at all. The idea is not that you are 'charging' the dead battery. You are combining the power of the good battery with the dead one to turn over the engine. Just connect and turn the key.

[lilsammywasapunkrock]

this only worked because the battery wasn't completely flat. say you left your headlights on overnight it would never work. look at the ah rating (sometimes listed as millamps, 1 amp hr = 1000 millamps). that is the actual battery capacity. 1ah means it will send one amp or electricity at one amp for an hour before being discharged.

when you start your car, it draws about 50-60 amps depending on motor, battery, started ect. as load is placed onto a battery, voltage drops and amprage increases to try to maintain the same amount of power required to turn the engine. 50 amps x 12vs = 600 watts. now say the battery is down to 8 or 10 v's, your amp load increases as the voltage drops. now say 8v's \ 600 watts = about 75 amps. as amprage increases, so does resistance over the connection. as resistance increases, if consumes more and more power loss in the form of heat. that's why a loose connection will spark. around 8v's the starter solenoid relay will cease to function, to prevent greatly increasing the load on the wires.

more likely then not, you could have probably bypasses the solenoid and started the car up and driven away with no issues. on my old fords I have a solenoid mounted on the fender and pop it over by jamming a screw driver in it occasionally when working under the hood instead of getting inside the car and turning the key.

now let's pretend the battery is rated at 650 CCA, or 650 cold cranking amps. this is the max amount of power the battery will deliver for about 30 seconds. after 30 seconds, the voltage will quickly drop, as will the amprage provided by the battery. so again, you likely only need 50-60 amps to start the car. it takes 24 hrs to fully charge a dead battery with a 1 amp charger. so essentially, your drill battery over the course of an hour will charged about 1/24th of a complete charge. it would never be able to actually start the car, it would only be able to charge your "dead" battery.

in reality, you just raised the voltage enough that the solenoid kept working and allowed the starter to turn. your battery is still bad, the drill battery did not start the car, it charged your "bad" battery. not only that, but after 8 mins it only charged 1/7.5 of 1hr, or the drill battery capacity. essentially, you charged it 1/24th of 1/7.5 of a full charge. essentially, barely at all. your battery was only just barely unable to start the car.

there is also something called battery recovery. say you try to crank your car over and it doesn't start. you immediately pop the hood and stick a voltmeter on it, it might read 6v's. now wait an hour, and it likely will have recovered to 8 or maybe 9v's. it will temporary deliver just a bit more power for a second or two after sitting.

now as far as 18v drill batteries go. do not use them if they are lithium ion. even a 12v lithium ion battery could explode once the car starts. your cars alt will produce 60 amps or so when first started. the voltage from when a cars sitting (ideally 12.5 v's) spikes to 14.2v's or higher. lithium is about 3.0v's per cell discharged and 4.1-4.2v's per cell charged. they usually have to be charged carefully to prevent an over voltage situation and burning them up, or worse.

a 12v lead acid battery can take 1-2 amps all day every day without being damaged. lithium will keep charging even once fully charged until it explodes. now throwing 50-60 amps into that battery once the car is started is a very bad idea. I actually ran my car dead with no jumper cables in the middle of then night, about a mile from my house. I had a small 11.1v model airplane lipo with me that is rated for 50-60 amps. i had some small thin alligator clips and hooked it up to my cars battery. it had enough power to pop the trunk (where my jumper cables were, I had no trunk key). out of curiosity, I just had to try cranking it over. when I did, it burned up and melted the wires to both alligator clips instantly.

now, I could have actually taken this small 11.1v 6 oz 2.2 ah battery and it probably would have started the car, if I had thick enough wires to carry the load. however, once the car started, it would have over charged the battery to 14.2v's and possibly damaged the battery, even if only still hooked up for a second. battery technology has really, really progressed in the last 10 years or so.

[michaelmccarty]

Thank you for this video!!

My daughter and I were stranded last night at midnight with a dead battery and no one around, while I was close to starting, turning over two or three times before hearing the click, my car was not able to start.

I had 50% battery on a Ryobi 18 volt 4ah. Vehicle, 2001 4Runner. Used two sockets to extend the terminals and hooked up the cables, charge for approximately 5 minutes drain the Ryobi battery and my car started right up . 24 hours later and I'm still riding the high that I got from jump-starting my car with a drill battery

[Proer]

Car? I'm surprised that thing doesn't have a rope to pull start it.

[brandonalbright]

HAHAHA - It My 2009 Toyota Sienna wouldn't start. The battery had a little juice, so I'm sure that helped. I did this and it turned over as it would if I was using another car to jump... You just made my day. Thanks!!!

[bandit]

Thanks man, I just started my chevy v8 with my cordless drill, worked a dream 👍🏼

[nelsonhorsley]

Just started my Dodge pickup with this technique. It really works!!

[mikecastellon]

I used a watch battery to jump start my bulldozer . Worked perfectly

[scottyknowspaincomesngoes]

while everyone is talking crap I actually tried it and it worked on my civic.

[johnson]

Thanks for the tip. Your video made the most sense and saved me in the early monring. All the other vids want to make a custom charger. Used my drill battery fully charged to 14.5 volts taped to dowel pins and 12ga wire. Started right up. Thanks!

[philliplinton]

Oh my God this totally worked I used it today this was the first thing that came up when I Googled how to start a car without another car and it freaking worked

[lancecooper]

Worked for me used 18v battery on a ford fiesta been a life saver thank you

[GaryMillerTheAMCGroup]

You are a life saver my guy!! Thanks for the information. Actually worked for a 2014 Chevy Tahoe LT. I used an 18V Dewalt Battery.