Watch: Rope-Start a Car With a Dead Battery

So your battery is dead, and no help is to be found. How can you get your car started?

Well, if it has a manual transmission you can always pull- or push-start it. But what if you aren’t strong enough to move the vehicle or it’s in a bad position?

In that case, you can jack up one of the drive wheels, put it in gear, wrap a rope around the high tire, and pull-start it like you’d start a lawnmower.

This works best on front-wheel-drive vehicles that don’t have all wheel drive. And if you try it on a rear-wheel drive vehicle with posi-trac rear end, it might just drive off without you. So use care.

Bottom line is, this clearly works in certain situations. Just make sure you put the transmission in neutral before you lower the jack (duh).

Enjoy.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.