How To Safely Change Your Car Battery 

If you have never changed the battery on your car before the task can be daunting.  This guide is designed to help you understand how to change your car battery safely so that you don’t do any harm to yourself or your vehicle.  By the end of this guide, you should know how to change your car battery safely.

1. Locate Your Car Battery

If you are wanting to change your car battery yourself and you have never done that before you would first want to locate your car battery.   The majority of vehicles will have their car battery in the engine bay somewhat close to the engine. However, a small group of sports cars and luxury vehicles will put their battery in the trunk of the vehicle to aid in weight distribution.  Either way, the car battery should be either in your engine bay or trunk so check both to locate it.

2. Test Your Old Battery

If you believe that your old battery is going bad you should probably go ahead and test it to make sure.  They have handheld battery testers that you can buy the other option is to take your car or car battery to a local auto parts store to have them test out the battery to make sure that it actually needs to be replaced.  

There is no sense of replacing your car battery if it does not need to be replaced.  If you have a multimeter on hand your car battery should be charged to at least 12.6 volts when your car is off.  If you’d like to check out the current prices of a cheap multimeter on Amazon click here.

3. Buy A New Car Battery

If you have determined that your car battery is indeed failing you would want to go ahead and buy a new one to put into your vehicle.  One thing that you do want to keep in mind is that car batteries do have a shelf life so you may want to purchase your car battery from a dealership that goes through car batteries consistently.  

If you’d like to learn more about the typical cost to buy a new car battery you may want to check out my other article on the subject.  It explains how much it typically costs to replace a car battery for different types of cars with specific examples.

Most batteries made today will be sealed from the factory, which means that they have the battery acid put inside of them and sealed up at the factory.  This is done that way so that the average consumer does not have to mess around with putting acid in their battery when they go to purchase one.

The downside to this is that the battery life begins to deteriorate once the battery acid is added inside of the battery, so any car batteries that you see sitting at an auto parts store are already deteriorating.  

I’ve had some motorcycle batteries where you put in the acid yourself when you buy the battery but that was a lot smaller battery and it was for a motorcycle.  You want to buy your battery from somewhere that sells a lot of batteries. You never know how long a local auto parts store have had their car batteries sitting on their shelf before someone comes along to buy one all the while it is beginning to deteriorate with age.

You can check the date that it was made on the battery to see how long it has been since it was manufactured.  If the battery is over a few months old you should look at buying another battery.

4. Disconnect Your Old Car Battery

The first step of any electrical work on your vehicle should involve disconnecting the negative battery terminal of your car battery.  Because you will be removing the old car battery entirely you would want to go ahead and remove both the negative and positive battery terminals.  You should be able to remove your negative and positive battery terminals from your battery using a small socket set or adjustable wrench.

It’s important that you still remove the negative battery connection first so that the electrical system is able to discharge itself.  Once you have removed the negative battery connection you can safely remove the positive battery connection.

5. Remove Your Old Car Battery

Once you have your negative and positive battery terminals removed from your old battery you are now ready to remove the old battery from your vehicle.  Most car batteries will be mounted in the engine bay of your vehicle using some sort of bracket to be able to keep the car battery secure while you are driving around.  This ensures that it doesn’t go flopping around in the engine bay when you hit speed bumps or potholes.

You should be able to remove the bracket holding down your car battery by using a socket set or a screwdriver to remove the bolts holding the car battery in place.  Once you have removed the brackets holding the car battery in place you should be able to lift the car battery out of the car battery mount.

6. Install Your New Car Battery

After you have your old car battery removed from your vehicle you can now go ahead and install the new one that you have purchased.  You would want to follow the reverse steps of how you removed your old car battery. You would want to drop your new car battery into the battery mounting bracket.  

Once you have the new car battery set in place you can go ahead and attach the mounting bracket to the battery to make sure that it is secured in place.  You do not want your battery accidentally flying around in your engine bay, they are heavy and can do damage to the different systems in your engine bay.

7. Connect Your New Car Battery

Once you have your new car battery mounted and secured in place on your vehicle you are now ready to reconnect the battery to your negative and positive leads.  It is important that you reconnect the leads correctly so that you don’t short circuit your vehicle’s electronics.

The black connector is your ground connector which should also be a black connector on your car battery.  The ground side of the battery can also be represented by the negative sign on your car battery.

The red connector is your positive lead and would need to be connected to the positive terminal coming from your car battery.  The positive terminal should also be red but it can also be represented as the plus sign on your car battery.

It’s important that you connect black to black, red to red otherwise you can cause your car battery to explode.  Once you are sure that you have the leads connected to the terminals correctly you would want to go ahead and tighten them down to the car battery terminals so that they don’t accidentally slip off when you hit a bump in the road.  

You want to make sure that they are snugly fitted to the battery terminals but not so overly tightened that you could not get them off if you were stranded on the side of the road.

8. Test Your New Car Battery

Once you have your new car battery installed and connected to your vehicle you would want to go ahead and try to start up your vehicle to make sure that everything is working properly.  If you go to fire up your engine and it does not start up you would want to recheck your connections to make sure that they are snug on the battery terminals and they are connected correctly.  

If your vehicle does startup then you should be good to go.  If you wanted you could check the voltage of your battery to make sure that it is at the correct voltage which should be around 12.6 volts when your vehicle off and around 13.7 to 14.7 volts when the car is running.  

9. Reset Your Car Radio

After replacing your car battery you may have to reset your radio.  On some cars when they lose power they reset everything.  In my car, I have to put in a code that is in the glove box into the radio to be able to use it again.  I believe that this is done for anti-theft purposes.

Have Someone Else Install Your New Car Battery

If you are still uncomfortable with replacing your car battery because of the safety aspect you have another alternative.  If you take your vehicle to your local auto parts store they will typically help you replace your car battery and take your old car battery as long as you purchase a new car battery through them.  

One thing I noted before is that if you go this route you would want to make sure that they give you a battery that has not been sitting on their shelf for months.  Ask to see when the car battery was manufactured so that you can determine if you want to go with that car battery or if it is old ask that they give you a newer one.

If you wanted to see a video that explains the process that I explained above you can watch this Youtube video below that shows the process in a video format that may be easier to understand.  

How To Change A Car Battery Safely – In Conclusion

If you have never replaced a car battery before replacing your car battery can be a dangerous process if you do not know what you are doing.  That is why you should understand the process and the different steps before you try to replace your car battery yourself. Hopefully, now you understand what it takes to be able to change your car battery safely.  You should now know how to change your car battery safely.