Batteries for Clueless Drivers

Typical 12-volt car battery

Here at the Antisocial Network, we've noticed that few topics are more mysterious to the average money-hungry freelancer than electricity. The advice some of these buffoons give at sites like HubPages.com and eHow.com is chock full of misinformation and misinterpretation. Today's Dumbass, whom we found while scrolling through articles about cars at eHow is Victoria Ries. Vicki collected fifteen bucks for telling the world "How to Disconnect a Car Battery"¹ which can now be found at Leaf Group's ItStillRuns niche site.

Ms. Ries' obvious unfamiliarity with automotive batteries is easiest to recognize in the text of her second step:

"Pick up the 1/2-inch wrench and place it on Unscrew the nut at the side of the negative terminal by turning it with a 1/2-inch wrench. When the terminal loosens enough to remove it from the negative post, stop and twist off the terminal without removing the nut all the way. This prevents losing the nut."

That whole "pick up the wrench" rubbish is a product of Demand Media's requirement that each how-to step begin with an "action verb." We'd have said "loosen," ourselves... and we also point out that our automotive specialist says he's never seen a battery terminal with a 1/2-inch nut: they're invariably 3/8-inch or 10mm. He also says the verb should be "lift," not "twist." But hey, Vicki's an "expert," according to eHow.

Victoria goes on to instruct us on the removal of the positive battery cable: "Repeat Step 2 on the positive terminal after you have lifted the negative terminal off the negative post. Be extra careful not to let the positive terminal touch any metal part of the car. Now she says "lift"! But the instructions left us wondering: WTF is she talking about with this bull about not letting the positive cable touch, etc.? Well, it's pretty obvious that she's trying to warn her readers not to ground the positive terminal while removing it, But since she's already removed the negative, ground, terminal, the circuit is open and grounding the positive post to a metal part of the car won't do diddly. That's why most people who, unlike Victoria, know something about cars and electricity remove the ground wire first. That's not to mention that once the positive cable's been removed, you could touch it to the negative cable (or ground it to the car's frame) without any effect - there's no battery in the circuit, dummy!

But Vicki don't know jack, and that's why she's today's recipient of The Dumbass of the Day. Yay, Victoria...

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_2278932_disconnect-car-battery.html

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