Hey guys, I parked my Prius at a neighbor’s place and left it for about a week. The lights were set to Auto, but when I came back to move the car, it was totally dead, I brought a booster pack pumped the fuse cover, and a little red latch and clamped the positive one there and the negative onto various different places on the chassis to ground. got in the car. It’s still totally dead, I tried touching the positive and negative of the booster, packed together quickly and a major sparks, so it is working Anything else I could check for? thanks in advance really appreciate it,! by the way, I have a replacement battery brand new that my son bought and never installed, but I still figured I should be able to get it boosted and working with a rep replacing that should I not? and when I drove it there, it started up and worked perfectly but I’m wondering if leaving the lights on Auto there was a little bit of drain or something else draining?
are you sure the jump pack was connected to a good ground? the red covered jump point is only metal on one side, make sure the jump pack clip is clamped on properly. charge the jump pack and try again, a spark doesn't mean much. put the jump pack back on and open the hatch. try jumping the battery directly. if that doesn't work, remove the cables from the battery and connect the jump pack to the cables. i hope you didn't damage the jump pack. charge the replacement battery before installing it
I suspect the ground you used was not good. Try again but this time turn the headlights on. When you have a good connection, you'll see the bright headlights and you'll know your connection is good.
Usually this is because your your dead 12v is sucking the power from the booster pack or the booster pack is cheap and weak. Try thoroughly charging 12v with a smart charger of 10 amps or higher via repair mode. Or put a new 12v in it. This is the one I recommend because it has more amp hours compared to auto store ones at only 1/3rd the price: https://www.ebay.com/itm/141206981871 It requires some minor changes to how the terminals mount. Hit me up if you go in this direction and need more details.
The lithium booster packs that I've owned have all had some form of charge-level indicator. I have definitely had those situations where the dead battery in the car sucks all the charge out of the booster pack before I have a chance to start the car. I can recognize those situations because I started with the booster pack showing 100% before I connected it, and then I connect it to the car and try to dive in the driver's door as fast as I can and push the start button but the dome lights and what not all fade back out before I can start. Then I go back out and disconnect the jump pack and check its level indicator and it's zero percent, nothing left. All got sucked out into the car's dead battery in a matter of seconds. But if you go back out and disconnect the jump pack and its level gauge still shows a good charge on it, then the problem's more likely to have been something else, like a poor connection.
