You may still start the car when battery runs down

Lots has been discussed about prepping your vehicle for those bone-chilling mornings to ensure you get on your way as quickly and easily as possible, but sometimes our foresight is clouded by frost-covered lenses. So, what can you do when you tap the start button (or twist the ignition key), and you’re rewarded with only the dreaded click-click-click of a low battery?

You can call roadside assistance, of course, but what if you’re told there’s a multihour wait?

Plug in your block heater:

First, don’t try to crank the starter — this will drain your battery further. You may still be able to get enough life out of it to fire up the engine — once the battery and/or engine is warmer.

If the vehicle has a block heater, plug it in for at least two hours, as this may make the engine easier to turn over, giving your low battery a fighting chance.

Warming the battery is the next step, but take a close look at the battery itself before trying to warm it up or boost it. The sides should be perfectly flat; if there are any signs of outward bulging, the liquid inside has frozen, making it defunct. This means it should be replaced, not boosted.

No block heater? No problem:

If you have a trouble-light — those caged bulbs on the end of an extension cord — with an incandescent bulb, park it under the hood facing the battery for a couple of hours, but make sure it doesn’t come into contact with any meltable plastics or rubber components.

If you don’t have one, a hair dryer will suffice, but this isn’t something you can just jam under the hood and walk away. Using a hair dryer is a hands-on job and you’ll need to hold it to keep things safe.

If the battery is located somewhere other than the engine bay, you’ll need easy access to try to warm it up. This is pretty much impossible if the battery is placed just ahead of one of the front wheel wells, but if it’s in the trunk, it’s possible to warm it up safely with either a trouble lamp or a hair dryer.

Once the battery is warm to the touch, you can try starting your vehicle again — but first make sure every electrical accessory is off. This means the climate control, interior lamps, headlights, etc. If your vehicle automatically turns on the daytime running lights when the ignition is activated, usually that can be overridden by engaging the parking brake.

If all this fails, you’ll be looking for a boost — and the next step is finding out how to do this safely.