How to Push Start a Car: A Guide to Bump Starting a Dead Battery

Nothing beats that special moment when someone turns the key and gets absolutely nothing. Dead silence. Maybe a pathetic little click if they're lucky.

Most of the time it's just a dead battery. Easy fix - call someone with jumper cables, get a jump, drive to the closest shop for a new battery. Problem solved.

But what happens when there's no one around to help? Or the jumper cables are back home in the garage? That's when things get interesting.

The Old School Fix

Push-starting a car is basically using the car's own momentum to kickstart the engine back to life. Some people call it bump starting, clutch starting, whatever. Point is, it's been getting people out of jams since cars had manual transmissions.

Will It Break Anything?

Nah, not really. The battery's already dead, so this isn't gonna make it any worse. The main risk is someone doing something stupid during the process - like running into a parked car or throwing out their back trying to push a Suburban uphill.

Bad News for Automatic Drivers

This whole thing only works with stick shifts. Automatic transmissions need the engine running to do their thing, so no dice. Manual transmission folks get to feel superior about something for once.

Sometimes You're Just Out of Luck

If the battery is completely toast - like, been sitting dead for months - even this won't help. At that point it's new battery time, no way around it.

How to Actually Do It

Find a good spot. Ideally somewhere with a gentle slope going downhill. Gravity's gonna do most of the heavy lifting. A big empty parking lot works too.

Get everything ready. Turn the key to the "on" position, but don't try starting it yet. Turn off the radio, AC, lights - anything that might suck up whatever juice is left.

Pick your gear. First gear if there's not much room, second if there's plenty of space to get moving. Keep that clutch pushed all the way to the floor.

Build up speed. Either coast down the hill or get someone to push until hitting maybe 8-10 mph. Don't need to be going crazy fast, just enough to get the engine turning.

Let 'er rip. Quick release of the clutch and - if everything goes right - the engine should catch and start running. If not, try again with a bit more speed or a faster clutch release.

Real World Stuff

Bigger cars are obviously harder to push and need more room to get going. A Honda Civic? One person can probably handle it. A Chevy Tahoe? Better round up some friends.

If stuck facing uphill, either push the thing around to face the other way, or try doing the whole thing in reverse. That second option is sketchy as hell though, so only if there's really no choice.

Bottom Line

Most people will never need to know this stuff, but when the moment comes, it sure beats sitting around waiting for AAA. Just remember - manual transmission only, don't be an idiot about safety, and sometimes a dead battery is just too dead to save.