"Bill" wrote in message
...
Rod Speed wrote:


"Hugh Byrne" wrote in message
...
Today the car wouldn't start at a friend's house who had no jumper
cables.
He had some electrical wire though.
We were just starting to jury rig something when his wife showed up with
cables in her trunk.

If we did jury rig electrical wires, we were unsure of what size would
work.

How can we determine what size electrical wire would work to jump a
typical
sedan in an emergency?

There is no real way to do that and the quite minimal wire that some
power bank starters is no real indication given that those are much
shorter than normal jumper cables. And what works really depends
on how ****ed the battery in the car that wont start is too. Sometimes
the problem is just that the voltage with the battery in the car which
wont start sags too much to provide enough voltage to see the
spark plugs firing well and that the reason it doesn’t start. So you
don’t necessarily need a lot of current thru the jumper to the car
used to start it, its not actually turning the starter motor over.


Yep, someone gave my wife a pair of "ridiculously cheap"-looking jumper
cables. And they worked when she needed them. In fact, looking back they
have worked for us twice. But it took about 10 minutes of "revving" before
the would turn over.

That’s different again, using the extra car to charge the battery
in the car that wont start. You don’t need much in the way of
cable between the cars to charge its battery that way.