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Handy gadget for the car - li-ion jump start kit

Johnmcl7

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A few years back when having some problems with starting my car I bought a little Jumping Jack starter kit (similar to this one - Max Portable Jump Start Battery Pack >> Jumping Jack) on a recommendation, it's a bigger version of the USB power banks but with enough power to jump start a car. I'd looked a conventional jump start kits before but they're bulky and slow to charge whereas these li-ion ones are small, light and reasonably quick to charge. They're very easy to use as well as you simply pop the bonnet, attach the terminals, wait for the lights to show good and then start the car.

I thought it was worth posting here because it's such a handy gadget to have and other people might not be aware of it. A few weeks ago my brother had borrowed my Mum's car and accidentally run the battery flat so I just chucked the starter in my bag, cycled over and then started the car and took it for a run. Yesterday with the lockdown easing a little I decided to take the dog out for a walk and unsurprisngly the car was completely dead, hooked up the starter and it came to life. When I came back to the car it wasn't a long enough run to get enough charge for the car to start itself and I was a bit nervous since i was down a forest track off a small back road but thankfully managed to jump start the car again.
 
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Get the car battery checked. If you run a lead-acid to extremely low voltages, it may not recover if the plates have sulfated too far.

(Battery duty cycle is important, especially across battery types.)
 
Very useful gadget but I want the version of this gadget that allows me to plug in a few Mavic batteries and jump start my truck with them. Somebody's got one of those, right?
 
Get the car battery checked. If you run a lead-acid to extremely low voltages, it may not recover if the plates have sulfated too far.

(Battery duty cycle is important, especially across battery types.)

I suspect the battery will need replaced sometime soon but given the car is unlikely to get much use this year looking on how things are going there's no point replacing anything yet.
 
I've had one of those since about 2012. I pulled one out when camping with friends at Yosemite in 2013 when this foreign visitor had left his headlights on killing his battery. My buddy who is an engineer asked me if I had jumper cables. I pulled out my little "anti gravity" jump kit. My buddy asked what are you planning to do with that? You should have seen the look on his face when that car started. I'm into astronomy and have always lugged a large battery to power the scopes. That jump battery is so small I can attach it to the tripod and run a scope all night long. They have limitations on heavier long term loads but are worth having if you're in the middle of nowhere and need to jump start your car. As far as charging Mavic batteries, these jump start batteries are just LiPo's similar to Mavic batteries so it's all about amp hours and how that pencils out. I've used them to start motorcycles and smaller vehicle engines. It won't jump start my 6.0 diesel but they do make larger versions that supply a higher burst to start larger engines.
 
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