hhrumadbruh

I was wondering if I could hook up a battery to the posts in the front of the vehicle to open the hatch.

I needed an allen wrench and shut the hatch as I don't trust people walking by.

Can I use jumper cables to connect to the battery posts up front to gain power to the vehicle?

07azhhr

There is only one battery post up front. It is the positive post. You use the shock tower strut nuts for the ground. There is a sticker next to one of the nuts that says batter ground.

If your battery(s) is/are out of the car then you have an open circuit situation. The battery completes the circuit between the positive cable and the body of the car. Plus you would then have a live wire that could arc out on something unless you safely propped it up and away from any metal.

firemangeorge

I'm going to have to partially disagree with 07azhhr. Even with the battery out, you should still be able to hook a jumper power source up. Why ? Because the other end of the positive wire will still be connected under the hood. Also, the grounding circuit will be completed when you hook the jumper's ground to the strut bolts(that's body grounding: same as what your negative battery cable does)

Now, as far as the actual positive battery cable in the rear touching anything metal. If you're not %100 sure about it, then don't attempt using a jump source as 07azhhr stated.

Grizzly old man

Seems to me that if you can open the hood to access the positive connection there you can also open the doors.

Why not crawl in the back door and hook your jumper cables to where the battery would hook up?

donbrew

Didn't we just go through that last week?

What you could do and be relatively safe is use a 9 volt battery, that is enough to pop the hatch.

Oldblue

I had to look! But I see this issue is under control, good info from all who answered.

07azhhr

I certainly could be wrong on that.

Grizzly old man

I think its been a little longer than that.

When the dude put the engine in my HHR last summer he managed to kill the battery. He was able to use the positive connection under the hood to pop the hatch but the battery was still in the car. He had been putting some of the parts he had to remove from the engine in the back so the rear deck was pretty well piled under or he would have gone in through the back seat.

He also used the 'black' connection by the positive connection under the hood instead of the strut nut his first try {he didn't know any better} and popped the fuse for the power steering so that had to be replaced.

I'm not real sure if a 9V {transistor radio battery} would have enough current in it to operate the relay that works the hatch or not,... once connected to the vehicle everything else that wants juice would probably suck it dry in a very short time and that small of a battery simply wouldn't have the capacity.

At least that's what I think. {I've never tried it so I just don't really know}

donbrew

Give the SEARCH a go grizzly.

Opening the hatch is close to weekly thread. Almost on par with oil and rotor threads.
Last week we established that you can open the hood with a dead battery by using the key in The Door. (that was on me)

There is an entire thread with details on how to wire a 9V battery into the fuse box in place of the relay.

Grizzly old man

A couple years ago my wife and I went down to the quad cities to go Christmas shopping. There was a woman with a shopping cart full of various items who was frantically waving her remote door opener key fob around trying to get into her mini van.

She asked me if I could help her get into her van somehow.

I asked her if she had the key to the car on the fob, she looked at me like I was stupid, so I took the keys away from her and used the key to unlock and open the door.

I helped her put her packages in her van then offered to go inside the mall with her and find a battery for her key fob. My wife stayed out in her van with the womans kids while I found the right battery at the dollar tree and replaced the dead one in her key fob.

I don't think she realized that key fobs used batteries at all. The new battery made the fob work just fine.


I hadn't seen the thread on using a 9V in the fuse box to operate the hatch latch but I will find it and read it, might come in handy someday. I suppose since you would only be operating that one circuit the 9V would handle it OK. {if I ever have the problem and have a 9V battery on hand that is}