Is it ok/safe to jump start my 2005 300C from the battery in the trunk?

I left it without starting it for about 3 weeks in the cold and the battery was dead. I did manage to start it from the 'battery' under the hood (yeah, I know, NOW, that that isn't a battery, its a 'power distribution centre') but that was problematic because I was nose first in the driveway and my jumper cables weren't long enough to reach from my wife's car behind me to the front of mine. So I WALKED over to Can Tire and a bought a new longer set. Except when I got home and unwound them I discovered they were also the short cables.

Boy was that fun, clipping the two sets together and balancing the black alligator clips on the tire so they wouldn't touch the red.

ANYWAY, back to the question, could I simply have used the one set running from her battery to my battery in the trunk? I seem to remember having to jump start a van my grandson was considering buying and I couldn't find WHERE to clip directly to the battery. (That one ended up ok because the van was parked in a double wide driveway and I could get mine up to it, nose beside nose.)

The manual references jump starting from under the hood, and identifies the location of the battery in the trunk, but says nothing about clipping the cables directly to that battery.

 

To the point, yes it's okay.

 

Thank you.
Good thing I pulled the wipers away from the windshield, since if it ever stops snowing I'll still be able to guess where the trunk would be and I can dig down to it so I can open it and take a look at the battery and figure out why I wondered where to clip the cables on.

Silliness aside, thank you.

 

I other thing. Do not have the Donner car engine running. Connect the ground (neg/black) lead on first and when disconnecting the neg lead last.

Get the above wrong and all kinds of bad things are possible. Your donner car engine is NOT running at any time during the procedure.

 

during the hooking up procedure? right? Once it is hooked up I need to run the doner car engine to get enough juice to start my car.


I don't know why I wondered where to hook the cables. Once I lifted the trunk cover and actually looked at the battery it was glaringly obvious. I suspect the previous time (when I went to jumpstart a van - see above) I never actually looked at the battery. Once I discovered I couldn't reach the van's battery from my car behind the van I probably never even looked for my battery. Fortunately that time the van was in a double wide driveway and I could get up beside it.

 

Current wisdom is that the doner car engine is NOT running at any time.

If you are in a jam and MUST run the doner engine then get the doner started and running prior to any hook up.

The idea is to avoid electrical transients in either car. Were it me I wouldn't take the risk.

 

Well, I took the risk, without realizing it was a risk, when I jumpstarted at the front of the car (i.e. the power distribution centre, not the battery itself). And I may have had an 'electrical transient' from that: my defrost, front & back, my fan and A/C no longer work. I've looked up the likely fuses, in the owners manual, but haven't gone out into the cold to check the actual fuses. Hopefully that is all it is.

My first thought, the one that caused me to post in the first place, was that the battery was in 'an enclosed area' so there might be a buildup of gases that might explode. Sort of like the direction to power boat sailors to run the fan in the engine compartment for a few minutes before trying to start the engine.

Thanks tarhealcracker.

 

Well, it worked. I was able to jump start after letting the battery soak for a bit, without the doner car running.

However, I guess I haven't run it enough to recharge the battery enough, as it has died a couple of times since.

This time it is B A D ! The doors are locked and the battery won't power those solenoids. I have replaced the outside door handles with poppers - which won't work when the battery is so low. It is so low it won't even power the trunk popper so I can't crawl in that way either!

I figured if I could hook up the jumpers to the power distribution centre under the hood I could get enough power to unlock the doors and power the poppers to unlatch them, plus pop the trunk to get my cables (which of course I wouldn't need once I had someone else's hooked up under the hood.)

B U T --- how do I get the hood open?! The hood latch is inside the locked car! I can see the latch through the grille, and get a stick onto it, and even feel a little bit of movement when I push on the stick, but not enough to open it. So the question remains: How do I get the hood open?