Automobile tips

I am almost completely ignorant when it comes to cars. Engines, mechanics, the electric system… All of it is a big black box to me. And I like it that way!

The car is first, foremost and last of all a means of getting from A to B with the most possible comfort and the minimal possible hassle.

I do like to have a lot of features in my cars, but that’s just because of the aforementioned comfort, not for the features’ sake.

Even so, we must sometimes know more that we wished we had to and this is where I collect those (unfortunately) necessary pieces of information.

Jump starting a car with a dead battery

This happened to me once and I had to find out the correct procedure to do it. If I ever need to do it again here is how to do it safely:

1. Turn off both cars;
2. Turn off each and every electrical part of each car;
3. Plug in the red wire to the positive (+) pin of the dead battery;
4. Plug in the other end of the red wire to the positive (+) pin of the good battery;
5. Plug in the black wire to the negative (-) pin of the good battery;
6. Plug in the other end of the black wire to a clean metal part of the car with the dead battery. This metal part should be on the engine block to provide good grounding. Avoid connecting the wire to the negative (-) pin of the dead battery directly as this is what causes the greatest risk of explosion;
7. Turn on the car with the good battery;
8. Wait for at least 5 minutes in order to let the dead battery charge a little and give you a hand starting the other car;
9. Turn on the car with the dead battery. If it doesn’t turn on on the first 2 or 3 attempts wait a bit longer. Leave the car on for the rest of the procedure;
10. Disconnect the black wire from the car with the dead battery;
11. Disconnect the other end of the black wire from the car with the good battery;
12. Disconnect the red wire from the car with the good battery;
13. Disconnect the other end of the red wire from the car with the dead battery;
14. Leave the car with the dead battery running for as long as possible (ideally something like an hour or so) so that the battery has a chance to charge.

The wiki

It lives!

There is a saying in Portugal (I’m guessing there is an equivalent saying for most languages but I just don’t know what the English version of it goes like) that says something about the perfect being an enemy of the good.

What it means is that sometimes you just have to go with what is good (… enough) and leave what is perfect for a later time.

This is what I’ve decided to do with the wiki on NunoNunes.org.

It is not done, it is not really ready for the “big time” but it is there, I can (and do) put information in it and I can (and do) use it to retrieve it later. So it is a lot more useful to me if I have it linked in from the main navigation bar as it should be.

There are a lot of details to cover, there is need for a major design overhaul (… or is there…) and this will probably not be the wiki-platform that I will say I’m fully satisfied with, but it is there and it does the job. And it does it quite well actually.

So that’s it, I welcome the latest member of the NunoNunes.org site: the wiki! :-)

[Update: The wiki has, in the mean time, been de-activated.]