Submitted By: Trevor S
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Is that not short the battery terminals together? I wonder how they’re gonna fix that after it explodes?
oh my .. god … jhfdlskjafd
As a safety feature, handle of clamp is shorted to opposite battery terminal, preventing the battery from being charged. Because, for this car, that would be dangerous.
Nice short cut.
i’m just ex-static to award you with the ‘positive-ly the best person ever’
award.
Wow. Just, wow. A little vibration and it looks like that clamp handle might descend, shorting the terminals. That would look spectacular on the highway, at 60 MPH, say.
@Carlo Even funnier than the picture was the mental image of a speeding vehicle with a fireworks display blasting out from under the hood!
hhmm. if what carlo said happens, can someone send me a picture of it?
Don’t forget the massive clumps of corrosion. It’s less distressing than the possibility of shorting out the battery but that’s still pretty messed up.
Probably what would happen is, like Carlo said, first the clamp would short the battery, cutting off all power to the engine and its accessories, stopping the car dead in its tracks. Second, the clamp would instantly weld itself to the terminals, become white hot, and set fire to the battery, which would then do the same for the rest of the engine bay, etc. etc.
need’s some duct tape insulation to keep from shorting out. 9/10 stars.
Well, unless it was in rapid motion, in which case it would skid, or continue rolling, depending on the age of the car, and it would veer out of control and crash in a spectacular manner.
It cannot short out. The rust insulates it very well.
lol, i think the clamps are isolated, don´t it? where are my glasses? ….mom, you see my gla..? oh it´s you unkle freddy … damn, somewhere i … …
The battery is only needed for starting the engine, assuming the alternator works (which may not be a safe assumption here). From there the engine draws its power from the fuel, using the alternator to power the electrical system. Shorting out the battery would probably cause some nice fireworks, but I don’t think it’d stop the engine, at least not until it destroyed something important.
(Disclaimer: I am not a mechanic and could be totally wrong.)
you are wrong
if there is a dead short, voltage in the system will drop to zero, so NOTHING is gonna work
He surely hates his car.
The problem is that the alternator’s power is also used to charge the battery when the engine is running. I don’t know if the circuits between the alternator and the battery are fused, but if it isn’t, then this bugger is going to short the alternator. You might get a pretty big fire, but probably not explosions, explosions with a gasoline engine are a little hard to get on chance.
Re. The Cat: The outputs from the alternator are wired to the same power leads as the battery’s positive and negative terminals. If you short out the battery terminals, you’re also shorting the outputs from the alternator. Bye bye electrical power – hello battery fire/explosion.
Old cars, which had point-condenser ignition and carburettors, could run without the battery after it was started. But newer cars, which have electronic ignition and fuel injection controlled by a ECU, will not run if the battery is disconnected. Smilr is right though, the clamp would short out the battery and the alternator.
FWIW, even in a mechanical ignition system the short will rob current from the ignition coil and you will still get no spark so the engine will stall. Any way you slice it, this one is rich.
Two words: Terminal failure.
Thanks so much for this dude! I’m definitely going to do this and I only have one question… did it work?
Comment win, dono1!
That handle just HAS to be that close to that other terminal? it’s like it was designed to be that close to it. Just the right angle, just the right slide-out.
This is NOT a good sign.
Actually, I predict that the bouncing of the vehicle will cause the clamp handle to only contact the terminal momentarily, causing a spectacular arc and melting the end of the crank off, thereby preventing further mechanical or electrical interruption.
See? Idiot-proof.
It’s been there so long that the clamp has corroded, too. That black paint on the other terminal is pretty damn good insulation.
Teebo, it looks like the clamp started at a different angle, and vibration caused it to move to the position of apparent doom. You can see marks on the battery from where the handle of the clamp hit the label as the clamp was tightened. In that position, the handle won’t short out.
That battery was probably not in good shape at the start of this “fix”. If the battery shorted out when they were trying to start the car, or at some other time when the alternator wasn’t providing much power, then there might not have been enough power in the battery to do anything really dramatic when it shorted.
My WAG is that it already has shorted.
I love this one…. a set of new leads is probably the same price as a freaking C-clamp that size anyway.
Short Circuit WIN!
a pretty nice mousetrap… but the clamp really needs to be treated with some rust-eze (“Don’t drive like my brother!!” – “And don’t drive like my brother!!”)
:-O
@The Cat
Actually the cat is right. The battery may short, but that will not stop the car, as the alternator actually powers the car in motion. Could be some interesting fireworks. And my Dad is the mechanic.
Every time I look at this site I feel better about my car. Thanks!
@L. Alahem
Mechanics are not necessarily gifted in the electrical department. THe B+ terminal on an alternator is the same thing as the positive battery post. The body of the alternator is grounded and thus is the equivalent of the negative battery post. When 0.2 ohms of resistance is placed between the positive and negative, Ohm’s law dictates that the vast majority of the total available current will go through the clamp. Ohm’s law also dictates that current will pass through the rest of the circuit; however, the available share of current will be insufficient to operate the rest of the system. Also, regardless that the alternator supplies the current to the electrical system when the engine is running, the fact of the short is going to have the same effect. So the first major problem will be that all electrical function in the car will cease, followed shortly thereafter by the fireworks display which may or may not be interrupted by the disintegration of that clamp’s handle. End of discussion. P.S. As far as cost-effectiveness goes, obviously the C-clamp was just laying around = ultimate low cost. My credentials on this subject begins with electrical and automotive education in 1965 and continued through to the present and twenty-five years doing dealer-level auto electrical/electronics/computer diagnosis/repair and A+ certification and so on, blah, blah, blah.
worth adding to that that given v=ir and i would more likely be 0.01 ohm, you would need 1000 amps or so to get 10v (across the clamp and hence the alternator and battery terminals) to keep the car running
@Doctor Carlo
Take a bow, sir!
@Doctor Carlo
That would be Trekkie Monster from Avenue Q.
And my brother-in law.
I did that once on my old Sentra but it was only to get home and yes it worked.
Well in defense of the clamp, I’d have to say that vibration wouldn’t make the handle fall down onto the other terminal, because it would have to rotate clockwise in order to do that, and I seriously doubt that vibration would cause the handle to tighten itself!
By the way, this reminds me of a true story about a guy that used a live bullet as a quick fix for a blown fuse in his car. He was shortly thereafter hospitalized due to a bullet wound in his groin area.
It depends on the make of car… Most Chevy’s have been this way for a couple decades. But my newer ford can run without a battery, and it is ECU controlled EFI.
@The Cat
Yup! It wouldn’t do much for the alternator either!!
do they not know that a battery terminal clamp is only 5 dollars at your local hardware store? splurge a little and buy the right part!!!
YOU hold the clamp, I’ll start it.
man. It’s gonna take a LOT of Coke to get THIS corrosion off!
@Squid – it could be difficult to argue with a person with such a mind-set. Fun, but difficult.
Squid – argue the invention of the flamethrower, chainsaw, or jackhammer.
Well, it’s safer than using one’s hands.
I once used a ballast resistor and a wire from a ski lift pass to jury-rig a clutch pedal that broke on my 79 Horizon – after a bit of cable adjustment I had about 1/4″ of useful clutch pedal action right where it was needed. Enough to drive 2 miles home. The lift ticket had been attached to my jacket and the ballast resistor I had bought when I bought the car, to be used in case of a breakdown. But I had expected to use it as a replacement ballast resistor, not as a strong lump of frictiony material with about the right shape and a hole in the middle.
Didn’t have cellphone cameras (or cellphones) back then, or I would have a nice picture of the arrangement.
Back in the 90′s, I had a dead alternator in a ’78 Rabbit.
It killed my battery, but I had to get home.
Borrowed a truck battery from a friend, put it on the floor of the car, ran jumper cables out the passenger side window, to the battery clamps. Wrapped the positive in a t-shirt and underwear, bungie-corded the hood mostly closed, and drove 30 miles that way.
In 1994 I bought a 1980 Civic from an impound car auction. It had giant C-clamps holding BOTH battery terminals on. Looked like yin and yang. Car ran and drove for 15 minutes before the timing belt broke. Paid $40, sold for $75. My first used car sale profit!
Make sure the “T” handle touches the negative post to get the full effect!!