A quick little tutorial for installing a 12V 18AH battery into your every day jump box.

Today's topic of battery discussion will be the installation of a 12V 18AH sealed lead acid battery into your typical multi-purpose jumper box. This particular unit that we will be working on is called the Jumper 850, and is manufactured by a company called Century. In its original state, this unit came equipped with a no name 12V 18AH battery that only lasted our customer a little over a year. We will be putting one of our PowerSonic PS-12180 batteries in its place.

Typicall 12V 18AH Jumper Box Wiring

Almost every jump box on the market today will have the same wiring setup depicted in this picture. The red wire cluster goes to the positive terminal of the battery, and the black wire cluster will be attached to the negative terminal of the battery. Every so often you will get an odd jump box that has a different color scheme for the wiring harness, but even then the darker of the two colors is typically the negative while the lighter will be the positive.

Replacing the 12V 18AH SLA Battery

For this particular jumper box, the 12V 18AH sealed lead acid battery is only accessible after the removal of the back cover of the unit. Before we start the removal process, you need to make sure that every accessory on the jumper box and the jumper box itself is turned off. To begin the installation, we first remove all the frame screws from the back of unit and place them off to the side (they are easy to loose). Once the screws secure the back of the unit are removed, you can then separate the back of the unit from the frame.

Alright, at this point you should now be looking directly at the 12V 18AH battery compartment. The battery is held in place by pressure from both the front and back cover of the unit, so there will be no double sided tape or glue to be worried about. To disconnect the battery, you will need to remove the negative and positive wires leading from the box to the 12V 18AH battery. In this case, the nut and bolt assembly was 10mm for both the positive and negative (and every other bolt in there!). Once the wiring is removed, you can then pick up and remove the spent 12V 18AH battery and replace it with (in our case) a PS-12180 sla battery. Once the new sla battery is in place and hooked up, all that is left to do is secure the back cover to the frame of box and your all set!