MythBusters - Car Jump Start

on this episode of Mythbusters Carrie Grant and Tor test the myth that you can jumpstart your car with a [Music] defibrillator our Intrepid Trio of untrained Medics have already proved that a jump start to your heart can cause your piercing to spark clear and your bra to burn oo a spark flu oh we got to burn a finally finally but the fans want to know what would happen if it wasn't your heart that needed a start but your car I love the absurdity of all this my car is dead medic the guys are using this old jalape as their test subject but despite its appearance it does work all right she started but will the myth I can see potentially why someone might think that this would be a good idea but I predict we have destruction of the battery and possible explosion and fire why would it explode we're subjecting that 12v battery and all the chemicals inside of it to several thousand volts so okay when you put it that way and with those kind of predictions Carrie has an eye on safety safety as always is a concern for us and since we're putting 4,000 volts into a system that's usually used to 12 volts we youve taken the key to the car and clamped it in the go position rather than say having me sit here on a wet seat full of metal coils it could ground out and uh well you know kill me we ready to start the car we're ready to try dude have faith the F later jump start woo all right charging in three 2 1 clear no explosion no fire and the engine didn't even turn over that was pretty anticlimactic that car is not starting should we should we give it another jump give it another one sure maybe we'll be able to turn it over with this one anything and clear not even a spark I thought there'd be at least a spark or something so it's an underwhelming result but what's really going on well there are two possibilities um one is that we fried the charging system well you know what we don't even know if this charge made it to the battery so that could be another reason why this thing didn't start and yeah that's a second possibility is maybe there's something wrong with the defibrillator so I propose what we do is bring in another vehicle try starting the car the regular way and see if it starts up to check option one a fried starter system the team use a second car with regular jumper cables all right get ready okay I'm going to try starting it is it starting I got nothing it's not turning over at all I can hear the solar noise clicking but uh you need more than that to start an engine yep before it's brushed with the defibrillator the car started which means I don't know it looks like the defibrillator killed the starter motor so if that's the case this is a horrible way to jump start your car yeah not recommended in the service manual and not recommended by [Music] Mythbusters

Channel: Discovery

Views: 470,552

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Id: Gd4_TlIKcU0

Length: 3min 27sec (207 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 23 2008