Few things are worse than a dead car battery on a frigid winter morning. Your hands are frozen, you’re late to work, and you just had to spend $200 to get your car towed.

All that hassle and headache can be avoided with proper car battery maintenance now, before it’s too late.

Video Transcription

Car Battery In Cold Weather

The first thing to having a reliable automobile in the cold weather is to have the battery in the car tested. And it has to be a proper test. Most free tests, well, they are usually worth just about as much as you pay for them. You pay nothing; you really get nothing, other than you may get sold something.

So you get a proper battery test. Once the battery is known to be good, and then you have to make sure that the battery cable connections are clean. They have to be free of any type of corrosion or anything that would interrupt the flow of electrical energy to the starter motor and the electrical system on the car.

Now, to help prevent that corrosion, you would use a battery terminal coating, and you should use the treated felt pads underneath the cables. These will help prevent corrosion.

Other than that, never ever try to jump start a frozen battery. Lots of times when batteries go dead, they freeze in the cold weather. Trying to jumpstart a frozen battery can cause it to explode and an exploding battery has about the same strength as three sticks of dynamite.

Do it right, and you will never need a jump-start in the first place.