This is my 45th winter of driving in sub zero weather so I do have some experience on ice and 35 years driving on wet clay in the summer on Saturday nights, big block modified racing. Up here you better check and clean all the connections positive and negative, cause it's a long cold bone chilling walk home when your battery goes south without you!!
Besides cleaning the connections and tightening them costs nothing!!

 

All the guy did was ask "What model jump starter would you recommend?"

 

Then I guess the proper answer would simply be none...

Hopefully what he was told will be more helpful though...

 

OK this thread made me wonder just how many CCA my emergency jump start box is rated at.

It has two very small 6 volt SLA {sealed lead acid} 'gel cell' battery's in it. The label on the outside of the unit says it can supply 300 amps of cold cranking power.

The battery's themselves say they are rated at 12 amp hours so I don't see where the 300 cold crank amps come from.

Maybe its the new math.

 

None , that's my final answer, Regis!

 

The reason I want one is for peace of mind. It would be very comforting to know that if for whatever reason the battery is drained, I can still start the car. I hope I never have to use it. Some of the posters in this thread seem to think that stuff doesn't happen and that you don't "need" a jump charger but things do happen and I'd rather be 30 miles from civilization knowing I could start the car if I had to with a dead battery than to be out in the middle of nowhere knowing that if the battery goes dead for whatever reason there will be no way to stop the car. These chargers can be bought for well under $100 and that is a small price to pay for the peace of mind. I'm planning on buying one anyway. Nobody is talking me out of it. So to get the thread back on track, what is a good brand and model of charger that will fit in the bins behind the rear seat? Thanks for those who have posted recommendations.

 

All the sources that I can find say that these chargers do indeed work. I don't know where you get the idea that they don't, but they have been proven to work in certain situations.

 

Another reason I want one of these is in case somebody needs a jump. These boosters are smaller than a set of jumper cables would be, and a lot simpler to hook up. And if you jump start a car with your car, it can cause electrical damage if things go wrong. If you use the jump starter it won't damage your car. I like to help others and I'm always giving coworkers and others with dead batteries a jump. I try to be nice to those in need. When my battery went dead earlier this week I was lucky that I found somebody with a set of cables who could give me a jump. Considering that I get off at 2am, I might not have even been able to make it home for several hours.

 

What your not understanding is that IF your battery fails, one of those little jump charges won't help you anyway...
MAYBE, if its 60 degrees out and the battery is dead because you left a load on it and ran it down it will probably start your car, but in the winter cold, with a battery that should have been replaced or with corroded cables that should have been cleaned, it wont help you one bit.
So buy what ever brand you find that you feel comfortable with, it sounds like you've made up your mind to get one and I'd guess they all will perform about the same.

 

I'm not really as simple minded as I may seem, I know they can make the difference sometimes. I even own and have two of them one in each of the cars my wife drives the most.

I also know what's in them and it ain't much. I got the first one way back when I got my '90 Mazda. I bought the car used from my younger sister. She had been having problems keeping the battery charged in it.

After I got the car I got the parts and rebuilt the alternator. After that the battery stayed charged just fine for several years. The battery had probably 10 years of service when one of the cells went bad.

With the weak cell sometimes if it did not start on the first try I would need a boost. I carried a set of good jumper cables and it was usually easy enough to get a jump from someone.

I got the jumper pack and it usually was just enough to get the job done. {Also it is handy for use with my amateur radios sometimes}

By that winter I bought a new battery and no longer needed a jump but I kept the jump pack.

My wife and daughter use them all the time to jump start {or at lest try to} other folks cars. They are too thick to use the jumper cables that I have in each of our cars. My wife is convinced she will blow up the computer in our car if she tries to use the cables but is confident using the jump box.