A woman recorded her husband’s emergency jumper cable solution — and it’s a good thing no one got hurt. Jacqueline Perez published a TikTok showing how her sister’s stalled car was able to get a jump, without proper cables. Her husband’s fix? Take apart a power strip and hope for the best. But how did it pan out for them?

“Remembering the time my man cut up an extension cord to jump start our car,” Perez (@jackie_0050) penned in a text overlay of her video. At the onset of the clip, she shows the cord in question: it’s a green unit you’d probably find at any major retailer.

Initial Trepidation

As her video progressed, she explained that the idea was one born out of necessity. “He had never done this … thought about it on the spot because we had no jumper cables,” she wrote. As she records the situation, from the interior of a car, someone can be heard outside stating, “I don’t even know what I’m doing, okay?” Which isn’t exactly what you want to hear from a person MacGyver-ing a rig to connect to your vehicle. Especially when it deals with a high-voltage scenario.

A woman, Perez’s sister, can be seen talking to the unsure jerry-rigger that she wasn’t confident in his solution. “I don’t want it. Jackie, come, please, no,” she says, looking into the camera. Following this she can be seen bouncing up and down anxiously. “No, no, no, don’t do it,” she tells the TikToker’s spouse. Another on-screen caption pops up in her clip, encapsulating the stress induced by the incident.

“No one knew what to expect. So safe to say we were all panicked,” Perez remarked. Then, the woman outside of the vehicle continued to voice her doubts. “I’m sweating freaking hard,” she says, as the person recording the action chuckles. “I’m freaking sweating, oh my gosh,” she says, grabbing a flashlight and wincing.

Under the Hood

Judging from the sounds emitting from the engine bay, it seems Perez was capturing her significant other’s handiwork. “Stop it, I’m scared too,” she says. At this point, the lens pans over to the man contorting what looks like exposed wiring from the power strip. “Are you scared?” the woman asks the man, who appears to be smiling in her direction.

Despite his calm demeanor, Perez wrote that her hubby was a bit worried about what would happen. “My husband admitted he was scared so my sister got more concerned. When Abraham [her husband] is scared … it’s bad,” she writes. Halfway through her video, and it still doesn’t look like Perez, her spouse, and sister are out of the woods.

“Time for me to panic,” she writes, before shouting out, “what do I do?” It’s at this point in the clip it becomes clear as to why she’s waiting in the vehicle. The chime for the car’s battery kicking on resounds throughout the car’s cabin, indicating the jump worked. “What do I do?” she asks again, requesting guidance on how to assist in successfully starting her sister’s ride. “Just turn it on?” she inquires while Abraham can be heard speaking beneath her.

Moment of Truth

Once aware of her responsibilities, Perez turns the key in the car’s ignition. Following this, the engine is heard coming to life. “And … breathe,” she writes in another overlay, indicating the hap-dash jump start job was a success. Her sisters can be heard exclaiming off-screen, impressed by Abraham’s ingenuity. Perez was smitten with his ability to help jump start her sibling’s vehicle. “You just sexier,” she coos as she approaches him still hovering over the open hood of the ride. He smiles as he tugs on the stripped wiring he affixed to his sister-in-law’s car battery.

“They went from freaking scared to hello friend. Babe, what the heck? You’ve never even done that?” she asks her husband, who is seen wrapping up the power strip. He then shows his hand off to the camera, which trembles a bit, before he tosses it to the ground. “He started the car with this DIY jumper cable,” Perez says before zooming into the green strip as her video comes to a close.

How To Properly Jump Start a Vehicle

Thankfully in the instance documented by Perez, the jump start appeared to work without a hitch. While she was impressed with her husband’s quick thinking, others have wondered about this same tactic. That’s probably because he had an understanding of how jumper cables work.

As AAA points out, these cables create a power transfer facilitated by the metal they’re composed of. Usually these wires are made of aluminum covered in copper which are subsequently coated in plastic or rubber. It’s generally believed that all-copper cables are of a higher quality and are a consistently safer option for battery jumping.

Oftentimes, cable clamps will be marked with positive and negative indicators. They can also be color coded, with red indicating the positive terminal connector. Black will be for the negative one. Its imperative that when jumping a car, these clamps are placed on their correlating terminals. I.e., positive goes on positive and negative goes on negative.

Start by clamping the positive (red) cable on the dead battery. Following this, grab the other positive end of the cable and attach it to the functioning vehicle’s live battery. Be sure to keep the clamps separated from each other as this happens. Then, attach the negative clamp to the negative terminal on the working car battery. Lastly, you’ll affix the negative clamp to the dead battery’s negative terminal.

Afterwards, start the working vehicle and give it around five to ten minutes to provide energy to the dead battery. Then, as Perez demonstrated in her clip, try starting the dead vehicle. If it starts up on the first go, you should allow it to run for 30 minutes to allow for the car to recharge the battery.

Don’t Try This at Home

As folks in this Quora thread state, stripping down a surge protector to create a makeshift set of jumper cables is a bad idea. One person said that due to the different types of voltages power strips and car batteries handle, that you could end up with a lot of problems. AAA also cautions against jump starting car batteries with disparate voltages and how this could end up damaging vehicles.

Sparks could fly, batteries could fry out, which could lead to fires. Furthermore, doing so could fry/blow out fuses in a vehicle, and lead to a whole mess of issues. Potentially, leading to costly repairs that far outweigh simply dropping in a new car battery.

As a person on the forum writes: “They are completely incompatible types of electricity … it’s a really bad idea. The cables are too thin, won’t provide enough current and may start a fire from the wires overheating,” they stated.

Someone else expounded upon the potential fire risks associated with carrying out Perez’s husbands jump start fix. “You could, in theory, use the bare wires from an extension lead to charge a car. But if you started the card whilst connected, the wires would almost certainly melt and catch fire. A car starting current is at least 100A and the cable would be rated around 15A,” they stated.

So while Perez’s hubby managed to make it work, auto experts would argue that he more than likely dodged a bullet.

MotorBiscuit has reached out to Perez via TikTok comment for further information.