Mini Cooper 2001-2006: How to Jump Start Battery
Jump starting is easy and occasionally your only option to get back on the road. Might as well jump.
This article applies to the Mini Cooper/Cooper-S (2001-2006).
Most of the time, when your car doesn't want to start, it's the battery. As car nerds, we hear the same story over and over. It goes something like this: "Well, I got in my car, all the lights turned on, so the battery is fine, but when I turned the key it went 'Clunk!' and didn't start!"
It's tricky. People think (understandably so) that because the lights turned on, the battery is okay, so the starter must be the issue. But the starter takes a lot of current to turn the motor over, so it's highly possible that your battery has the oomph to light the lights but not to start your car. At a rough guess, ninety nine percent of the problems we hear with people's cars not starting are battery/alternator related.
Materials Needed
- Jumper cables
- Owner's manual
We are going to tell you too, but check page 124 of your owner's manual for extra tips and the location of the charging posts.
Step 1 – Locate batteries and park cars
Locate the batteries and then park both cars so that the jumper cables can reach.
Sure, that's pretty obvious, but if you're like me, you can easily forget what side of the vehicle your battery is on, especially when you're trying to remember whether it's on the left or right, or in the case of some Minis, the front or back. With the batteries of both cars located, pull the two cars close enough together so that your jumper cables can reach from battery to battery.
Some nicer sets of jumper cables are nice and long to help this process out, but long jumper cables also take up a lot of room in your car when they're not being used, so that can be annoying, too.
Step 2 – Connect the jumper cables
You may have seen people connect jumper cables to the body of their car rather than the negative (minus sign, "-") terminal of their battery, but as you can see in the excerpted owner's manual photo above, we're going straight to the source here, right on the battery.
Connect the red/orange jumper cable lead to the positive (plus sign, "+") terminal on the battery. Make sure that the other end of the cables don't touch one another during this process. That will create some cool sparks, but it's highly unsafe and not recommended. You don't want to go from a small problem like a flat battery to a big problem like a burned down car.
Next, connect the cables to the support car in the same way. If the posts are corroded, you may have to jiggle the cables around to get a good contact. Be careful doing this that you don't short the positive terminal against the body of the car. That would be bad.
Step 3 – Start the support car and let it run a while
We want the support car to run for a minute or two here at a fast idle, meaning someone should be in the car pressing the accelerator (gas) pedal slightly. This is so that the engine is turning over at high enough revs that the alternator in the support vehicle kicks on and is charging its system, and, since your car is attached to it with cables now, your system, too.
Step 4 – Start your car
With the support car running at the fast idle, try starting your car. If it doesn't work, try giving it another minute or two and repeat. Most of the time it will start if you have a good connection with the other car, unless it has a charging system problem, too!
Pro Tip: Alternator
After you use this article to learn how to jump start your car, you should get your charging system fully checked out. Often, when the battery goes flat, it's because the alternator is starting to go, so it isn't charging the battery as much as it should. When the battery goes flat, the alternator has to work harder, so it will often give up the ghost from the extra effort. They're kind of in a suicide pact that way.
We're not suggesting that you replace them in pairs always, but do get your alternator checked once you're running again. Otherwise, you might be buying a battery every few weeks, or asking people to jump your car continually, which is a real drag.
(Related Article: How to Replace Alternator - NorthAmericanMotoring.com)
Featured Video: How to Jump Start Mini Cooper
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