How To: Install a Battery in Your Vehicle

Installing a new battery in your vehicle is an easy form of maintenance that will only take a few minutes of your time and a few tools. Whether you're installing a new battery in your car, truck or SUV, watch as we show you how simple it is to install a new battery in your vehicle.

For a step-by-step guide and a complete list of supplies, visit us at: https://www.oreillyauto.com/how-to-hu...

0:00 Welcome Back
0:14 Locate Your Battery
0:28 Tools Needed
1:01 Detach Cables and Hold-Down
1:40 Remove the Old Battery
1:45 Install the New Battery
1:51 Reattach Battery Cables
2:15 Test Your Battery

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Transcript:
A couple things before we get started: there was a time when you could lift the hood of just about any vehicle and the battery would be sitting right there. These days, you could find your battery in the trunk or even behind a wheel well, so… as usual, we recommend you consult your service manual before you get into this. And if you find it’s going to be more complicated than you thought, we’d be happy to recommend a professional technician in your area.

In most cases, the only tools you’ll need are a wrench to loosen the battery bolts & nuts and a ratchet & socket to take out the battery hold-down. When you get the battery re-installed, chances are, your radio presets and other operator preferences will be cleared out. In some vehicles, you may have to re-enter a security code to get the stereo working again.

Also, some vehicles recommend the use of a memory saver to keep the vehicle from going into ‘adaptive learning’ mode after you’ve installed the new battery. Always consult your owner’s service manual for necessary security codes and the correct battery installation procedure for your vehicle.

All right—for our purposes today, I’m going to be changing out the battery on this 2013 Toyota Tacoma.

[Hood open]
So you’ll see here that we’ve got three things we’ll need to detach to get this battery out. This is the hold-down, which helps keep the battery in place. Then we’ve got cables attached to each of the two battery terminals. We’ll start by loosening this hold-down… and slipping out the curved end of the bolt… And we’ll just swing that back out of the way.

Now when you go to disconnect the cables from the battery terminals, you’ll want to disconnect the negative cable first—it’s the one connected to the negative terminal, which is marked with a “minus sign”. Just loosen this enough to slip the connector off… and move it to the side, out of your way. Make sure it’s not resting on bare metal. Same thing with the positive cable—loosen this connector enough that you can slip it off… and move that to the side. And at this point, you should be ready to lift this battery out… very carefully—just trying to keep it upright.

Maybe you’ve got your new battery already, or maybe you run over to your O’Reilly Auto Parts store to leave this core and pick up a replacement. Either way…

Once you’ve got your new battery, you’re just going to ease it back into the tray… And we’re going to reattach the cables in reverse order—the positive will go on first… Be sure to slip that as far down on the post as you can before you tighten it… Then the negative…

And we’ll just reposition this hold-down… slip the curved end of this bolt into the hole… and tighten that down.